A Halo for the Hidden Leaf
by Ir0nM41den18
Summary: The Master Chief is falling towards the planet Requiem, when he is suddenly sucked into a rift in reallity itself, sending him to a parallel universe. There he has to face some of his strongest opponents yet. Will John survive the encounter with actual Ninjas? Read and find out ;)
1. Chapter 1: SPARTAN vs Ninja

**Author's Note: Hey everybody, this is my first attempt at a cross-over fanfiction. I'm mainly writing this story for fun, but also to test and hopefully further improve my English skills (so please forgive me for any grammatical or spelling errors). This story begins at the beginning of the game Halo 4 when the Master Chief is being sucked into the planet Requiem, but is transported to an alternate universe (the one of the Naruto story). Please enjoy.**

**DISCLAIMER: I own neither Naruto nor Halo!**

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It was too late to get to an escape pod. John knew it. He knew that only a miracle could save him now. The FORWARD UNTO DAWN was being sucked into the planet along with the Covenant ships. But in opposition to them the FORWARD was only half a ship with no kinetic barriers and therefore being obliterated in the process. The Master Chief held onto the first somewhat big piece of metal he could grasp, luckily since the ship was about to  
explode right beneath his feet.

"Now!" Cortana shouted in John's head and he reacted in the same instant, pushing himself away from the ship with all his force. Four seconds later the ship finally exploded and the force of the shockwave pushed John even stronger towards the opening in the planet. Huge pieces of metal came flying towards him and he had to use his reflexes to a rare maximum. But then he saw it. Something, that looked like a shiny rift in reality itself.

"Watch out John!" Cortana cried "We don't know what it is!" But the Master Chief already knew that it was too late.

He was floating towards the rift with incredible speed, no evading it possible. He closed his eyes and prepared for... He didn't really know what he prepared for. Death most likely. There was a bright light which John could even see with his eyes closed. Then he suddenly felt like he was falling through an atmosphere. He opened his eyes only to see that he was about to fall about a mile towards a huge forest. Now he knew what to prepare himself for. The impact. And when it came it came hard (That's what she said!). Strangely the impact didn't hurt as bad as John had expected. His armor didn't even lock down. After a couple of seconds to regain his senses, John pushed himself off the ground and gracefully jumped into a standing position.

"Cortana! How are you?" John asked aloud. The answer could only heard by John himself of course.

"Of course I'm okay. The better question is: How do YOU feel?" Cortana said.

"I'm fine." John answered "Where are we?"

"You may not believe it, but I have no idea..." Cortana answered clearly uncomfortable with the situation.  
John looked around the crash zone. He couldn't believe all the gear he found when he made two piles of it. One pile for Weapons and one for armor-abilities.

"Nice gear you have there. You are the luckiest soldier in the universe." Cortana exclaimed.

John wasn't too sure of that, but he hoped Cortana was right. First he started installing the armor equipment, which actually was a lot. He got a Jetpack with a built-in thruster pack, an active camouflage chip, a hologram projector, an armor lock shield extension and an attachment for his helmet which granted him some sort of heat vision. Thanks to Cortana the whole installing process was rather easy and was finished quite quickly.

Then John took a look at his weapons. His combat knife still was in its place. On the ground before him there was a DMR, a UNSC Sniper Rifle, a MA5C Assault Rifle, a M6D Magnum pistol, a shotgun, a Battle Rifle, a Rocket Launcher with two rockets, a Spartan Laser and even a type 1 energy sword. The icing on that load of firepower consisted of a whole lot of ammunition and at least a dozen each frag and plasma grenades. His only problem was how he would be able to transport all of these weapons.

"Unknown contacts inbound! Closing in fast." Cortana interrupted his thoughts "I recognize five contacts. John you have 2 minutes at most until they get here."

John reacted on instinct. If said contacts were Covenant forces (or worse) he had to make the most out of these two minutes he had. The Chief used his Jetpack to hide all weapons within the crash area, mostly in tree trunks and bushes. He only kept the Magnum, the Battle Rifle, the energy sword and some grenades for himself. Then he got to cover within a huge bush.

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They were almost at the place where whatever it was hit the ground hard enough to be heard and seen even from the Hidden Leaf Village. The fifth Hokage had sent them immediately to investigate the crash site. Sasuke Uchiha had a bad feeling leading his Anbu squad into this area since he had never heard of a technique that could cause such an explosion. Well except for the Ultimate technique of Deidara, but that man had been dead for some years now. However, if any Ninja as strong as Deidara was the cause of the Impact Sasuke's worries were totally justified.

"Sir! I don't recognize any strong source of chakra near the crater." the sensoric Shinobi of his squad said.

Sasuke was relieved, but stayed cautious. He had learned to never ever underestimate an opponent the hard way. When they finally arrived at the crash site no trace of a human being could be found except for some fresh footsteps right next to the crater. Sasuke scanned the area carefully and only one thing ticked him of. One little branch of a huge bush was scattered. Then he saw a golden reflection somewhere between the leaves only for the  
shortest of moments, but it sufficed. He formed his hand signs with superhuman speed.

"Fire-style! Fireball-Jutsu!" he shouted and the bush went up in flames.

The next thing Sasuke knew was a fist thrusting out of the bush, closing the distance of at least 5 meters with such an incredible speed that he couldn't possibly react fast enough to evade. The punch landed right in his face almost crushing his skull and sending him flying backwards right through a couple of thick trees. When Sasuke regained his senses and held  
his face in hellish pain the dust started to clear and opened his vision to a creature unlike anything he or any of his squad members had ever seen. In the middle of the clearing there was a warrior in green full body armor.

He was at least 3 heads taller than Sasuke and held something in his hand that was probably some kind of weapon, but Sasuke couldn't possibly think what the long metal rod could do to qualify as a serious weapon. The green person raised the rod so that it pointed directly at Sasuke. Only now Sasuke would recognize a little hole at the end of the rod. He didn't know what it could do, but he didn't even want to find out.

He quickly jumped to his feet and high in the air and not a second too early. At the same moment he jumped he heard a loud bang and could see three deep holes in the tree right where he had been only half a second ago.

"Don't let him hit you!" He shouted to his squad mates. Two of them had already initiated a counter attack.

Fast and accurate. Perfectly from two sides and normally sealing any target's fate. Only that this warrior wasn't just any target. The warrior's reaction was so fast that even Sasuke's Sharingan couldn't follow it. All that could be heard was the breaking of jaws and ribs and almost in the same instant it was all over. Two squad mates down heavily wounded, leaving Sasuke only with two Shinobi. However the strange soldier did not seem to intend to kill the wounded Ninjas. Instead he now seemed to focus on the Ninjas who were still able to fight, mainly on Sasuke though since it appeared that his leading position was no secret from this person any more.

Sasuke activated his Mangekyo Sharingan, not going unnoticed by the green warrior who immediately dashed towards him. Sasuke didn't have time to use his Amaterasu or Susano'o. He was lucky enough to evade the punch at the last moment and he only realized HOW lucky that escape was when the indeed big and thick tree almost exploded behind him.

'Such unbelievable force' He thought 'If that fist hits me again it might kill me.'

Even though he didn't want to admit it, this green soldier who seemed like he could only use Tai-Jutsu was one of the scariest and strongest opponents Sasuke had faced in the last three years. He suddenly wished he could switch this unknown enemy for someone like Deidara who was very dangerous, but at least a lot slower. Knowing quite a lot of strong Ninjas, this person's reaction time was still way off the charts, even for a Special Jounin ranked Shinobi.

His two remaining squad mates tried to keep the warrior at a distance, totally forgetting about the powerful ranged weapon the stranger wielded. One shot to the knee of the first Ninja  
and he went down heavily wounded and unable to continue the fight. The other Shinobi jumped high in the air ready to attack. Pink hair flowed through the wind under the Anbu mask.

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The pink haired attacker definitely was female. Flat chested, but female. Her fist started glowing in the air and John knew this was a bad sign. He ducked and just when the fist hit his neck his armor lock over-shield activated. The female Ninja bounced off the Master Chief's kinetic barrier and flew backwards into the air again.

John didn't waste a second. He disabled armor lock and instead activated his Jetpack to fly after her. While thrusting upwards he had already grabbed his combat knife and and swung it towards the woman's gut. A loud cry was what broke the silence of the attack.

"NOOOOO! SAKURA!" John recognized the voice as the man who seemed to be the enemy team leader so he ignored it and managed to bury his knife deep in the woman's stomach. When he landed he caught the unconscious Shinobi in his arms and laid her on the ground. Once he looked for the last enemy standing, he already found himself at a need to evade a gigantic glowing bolt that had been shot by some sort of even more gigantic exoskeleton, which had formed around the dark haired man. Looking at the attacker, John realized yet another unusual thing about the Ninja, besides him having unlogical superpowers. His eyes were a mixture of red and black, but the really weird thing was that they appeared to form a pattern. The Master Chief did not have any time to analyze this any further, since he had to evade several more bolts that were just waiting to impale him. Finally the rain of pales stopped, but instead John could see the man making strange sings with his hands.

"CHIDORI!" was all John heard the Ninja shout.

A blade of pure electricity formed around the Shinobi's hand and John knew that this blade would easily cut through his shield and armor, not to mention his body, if it hit him. On reflex he did the first and probably best thing that came to his mind.

He drew his energy sword and used his thruster pack to push himself towards the enemy who himself rushed towards the Master Chief. At this Moment not even Cortana could guess which blade and thus which warrior would be victorious. As the swords clashed the clearing was being covered in a bright light.

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**A/N: Thanks a lot for reading the first chapter of my story. Please tell me your thoughts about it, I really wanna know if I'm doing good or bad for my first fanfiction :D**

**Some explanations:**  
**The story starts at the beginning of Halo 4. The rift that John is sucked in sends him to a parallel universe, the one where the story of Naruto takes place. Since in this other universe the human body relies on chakra to function, the Master Chief of course is theoretically able to use chakra, but was never trained in Nin- or Gen-Jutsu (obviously) so he will instinctively and without knowing use his chakra to make himself even stronger (like Sakura/Tsunade) and faster (like Rock Lee/Gai). Then of course there is the equipment that has a bit less restrictions than in the game, since I wanted to keep it interesting.**  
**These are the only reasons why John could keep up with a Ninja in the first place (His weapons, armor and superior modified genes give him a little edge though).**


	2. Chapter 2: Calm before the Storm

**Here we go. Chapter 2 and finally the outcome of the battle 'Master Chief vs Sasuke Uchiha'. As always I hope you'll enjoy reading and reviewing ;)**

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A worried Naruto went in circles in the Hokage's office. He couldn't believe Tsunade had sent his closest friends to investigate the source of such an incredible display of power. Then again Sasuke and Sakura were two of the best and strongest Shinobi Konoha had to offer. Still he had the worst feeling about a mission since the great Ninja War.

"You should have sent me with them!" he shouted at the woman sitting at the desk.

The fifth Hokage looked like she'd punch him in the face four a quick moment, but then relaxed her facial expression.

"Naruto you're by far one of Konoha's most powerful Shinobi..."

"THEN WHY AM I STILL HERE?" Naruto interrupted.

"SHUT UP YOU BRAT! I kept you here for a good reason. They should be here any moment."

Just as she said these words the door opened and in came a bunch of familiar faces. Neji and Hinata Hyuga, Kiba Inuzuka, Shikamaru Nara, Ino Yamanaka, Rock Lee and Captain Yamato.

"Back-up force reporting for duty." Yamato said.

"Very good." Tsunade answered "It has been ten minutes since the last update of the Recon-squad came in. I fear that something might have happened..."

"I knew it!" Naruto interrupted the Hokage again.

"Shut up and let me finish Naruto!" Tsunade shouted "Anyway you all are to head for the crater and find out what happened to the Anbu squad. Yes that includes you going there as well, Naruto. Dismissed!"

Just in that moment a lightning struck right at the smoking crater. The weird thing was, that they could even see it from the Hokage's office and that there wasn't a single cloud in the sky.

"GO!" Tsunade shouted even louder than before. The 'Back-up force' as Yamato had called the team didn't waste any time and they were on their way only two seconds later.

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John was thrown against a tree back-first so hard hat the impact instantly depleted his energy shield. He jumped back up and felt a horrible pain in his lower right arm. The cut from the lightning blade was small, yet it hurt as bad as a plasma bolt on bare flesh... and it definitely pierced the armor. He took a quick glance at his opponent only to see the raven-haired man in a situation almost identical to his.

The Ninja had also been thrown backwards and hit a tree, but it seemed that his lack of an energy shield left him in far worse condition than John. The Master Chief immediately raised his Battle Rifle and aimed for the man's head. Then he got up and closed in slowly.

He found that his attacker had fainted and contemplated shooting him, just to get rid of that problem for good.

"You should let him live." Cortana interrupted John's thoughts.

"Why?" he asked.

"They were obviously more afraid of you than you were of them." The A.I. answered.

"It appears you forgot what I am Cortana, what I was made for."

"That still doesn't make you less of a human than them." John was caught off guard by the analysis that these warriors were supposed to be human, given their incredible powers.

"Are you positive these people are human?"

"Absolutely. I scanned their biological structure. The only difference to a regular human is some strange energy flowing through their bodies." She said showing a diagram to the Master Chief as proof.

"How is the situation then? Are we clear?"

Cortana widened the array scanned by the motion tracker. And there they were. Eight unknown contacts were closing in very fast and they came from the same direction as the previous five.

"This day is getting better by the minute" John said with a lot of sarcasm in his voice.

If these contacts were about as strong as the other ones, he needed another weapon. He remembered where all he had hidden was and none of the hiding spots had been destroyed by the previous battle. The Master Chief quickly switched his Battle Rifle for the shotgun which - to the Chief's delight - was overflowing with ammunition. Then he jumped onto a branch that was covered by leaves so he wouldn't be seen at first glance.

"Come get some." he said absentmindedly and waited for the contacts to arrive at the clearing.

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Naruto jumped down to the crater first (of course) closely followed by Lee, Hinata and Neji. Shikamaru and the others stayed up in the trees to come up with a battle plan if needed. When Naruto saw Sakura and Sasuke seriously wounded on the ground he almost had a heart attack. While Sakura had a small, yet deep cut in the gut Sasuke was unconscious and covered in blood. Two states that Naruto couldn't have Sasuke pictured in ever. Yet here he was, obviously defeated by a very strong opponent.

Ino immediately rushed towards the wounded Ninjas and started treating their wounds. Kiba followed her, in case she got attacked while doing her job.

Neji and Hinata acted simultaneously: "Byakugan!" they shouted and searched the area. Finding the enemy didn't even take them two seconds.

"There" Neji said, inconspicuously pointing to the location of whoever had beaten up an entire Anbu squad so badly. Naruto immediately started molding chakra in his palm for a Rasengan and charged towards the branch that Neji had pointed to.

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If John hadn't been a SPARTAN or to be more exact if he hadn't had such ridiculously quick reflexes, that orb in the blond man's hand would've definitely hit him. Would've obliterated him. He knew that when he saw what was left of the branch on which he'd just been hiding a couple of seconds ago.

"Such incredible power..." was all that Cortana could say to this as John landed down in the clearing. Now he had a good view on most of them. Two of them had white pupil-less eyes and dark hair what made them look like brother and sister, one man that had a huge dog with him, one man wearing a green jumpsuit, and of course the blond man with the orange jacket who had nearly hit John with whatever that glowing orb in his hand had been .The White-eyed man spoke up and all of them including John listened, carefully watching each other while doing so.

"He seems to have the same problem as Lee. I mean his chakra cords are too slim for him to be able to use any kind of Nin- or Gen-Jutsu!"

"What? And a guy like that's supposed to be able to beat Sasuke? One of the strongest Shinobi of our village?" the blond man answered "That can't be! It's impossible!"

Now a third man spoke up "If that is the case I want to fight him! One on one." John looked at the man. It was the one wearing a green Jumpsuit. He had short black hair, but his by far most obvious feature were his huge bushy eye-brows.

"What do you say?" It took the Master Chief a second to realize that he was supposed to answer the last question.

So he calmly answered "I do not wish to fight you, but I will if I'm forced to."

"Either that or you'll have to take all of us on at once!" the man with the dog shouted.

John didn't exactly feel like fighting a battle that he wouldn't be able to win so he decided on what seemed to be the easier choice and accepted bushy-brow's challenge.

"Awesome! My name is Rock Lee. They call me Konoha's green beast!"

John took a moment to think of a suitable introduction in response, then he answered in the most menacing voice he could muster:  
"I am Master Chief Petty Officer, Spartan 117. My friends call me John. My enemies call me Demon!"

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**End of Chapter 2**

**Aaaaaand here we go, yet another cliffhanger :D I hope I don't piss anyone off too much with these endings, but I want to keep up the suspense^^**


	3. Chapter 3: Green Beast vs Green Demon

**Hey sorry for the long wait, but the day I wanted to upload this chapter my PC went to shit, so I had to rewrite the entire thing from scratch. However this gave me a lot of new ideas which resulted in this chapter being a lot longer than the original :D Hope you like it and don't forget to review.**

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„I'll leave the first attack to you." Lee told the strange warrior.

He was feeling very confident. When it came to Tai-Jutsu the only person who could keep up with him was his Sensei Gai. In addition to that he wasn't wearing his wrist and ankle weights, so he could move faster than a regular human eye could see.

The man in green seemed to consider his possibilities for a few seconds, so Lee was taken by complete surprise at the sudden dash, which the warrior performed towards him.

All he could see was a green blur and then he felt it. An armored fist to his face to be exact. The force behind the punch was so great, that it shoved him right through the tree behind him.

His jaw hurt like almost never before and he was still in shock about the swiftness of that armored 'demon'. He got up, focused on his opponent, who was standing about 10 meters away from him.

"Alright let's see just how fast you can go." Lee mumbled with a smirk.

He dashed towards the Master Chief, but in the last instant before the armored boot could hit him, he made a swift turn and in a matter of milliseconds he was behind the stranger, starting a barrage of punches and kicks to the man's back. However he couldn't seem to cause any real damage, since his limbs were always reflected in a different direction before they could hit him.

'What kind of Jutsu is this?' He thought. Then he decided on a strong roundhouse kick from the side to send his opponent crashing into some trees of his own.

But just as he had his leg stretched for the kick, the warrior had turned towards him and grabbed hold of his leg. Lee couldn't hope to counter the grip; his opponent was simply way out of his league in terms of strength. The stranger pulled Lee towards him and at the same time lifted his own leg for a push kick like Lee had never taken before.

Rock Lee could literally feel some of his ribs breaking under the force of the impact and then felt the familiar sensation of flying backwards. This time however he managed to land on his feet. Now he tasted blood and all things considered it had to be his own. He now knew that he had to get serious. And with that knowledge he opened the first six of the inner gates.

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John, who was still watching his opponent getting up, suddenly felt a very powerful aura emerging from bushy-brow's body and he knew that had to be bad news, since almost all of the other Shinobi started cheering. He considered his fear confirmed when Lee started glowing in a green fashion and instinctively drew his shotgun, aiming at his adversary. But as soon as he was ready to shoot, Lee wasn't in his field of sight anymore.

The first kick came from below and hit his jaw, thrusting John into the air. The second kick hit his stomach. After several more kicks from every possible direction, John was kicked back down into the crater. His shields were far beyond depleted and his entire body hurt like hell, but he could still move.

"Luckiest soldier, my ass." He grumbled.

"Asakujaku!" He heard Lee yell and instantly activated one of his gadgets in response, hoping it was the right one.

Only a split second after that the Master Chief saw what looked like a swarm of glowing fireballs flying directly towards him. None of them actually hit him though. His bubble-shield was deflecting every single one of the fireballs and at the same time covering the clearing in a cloud of dust and smoke. He quickly got up and now felt an enormous amount of adrenalin rush through his veins. The world around John suddenly became a whole lot slower.

John remembered his old SPARTAN II comrades calling this phenomenon 'Spartan time', since the world appeared in slow-motion for anyone experiencing it. Usually this enabled a SPARTAN to catch missiles out of thin air and even dodge automatic gunfire. That was exactly what he needed now.

When the dust settled and he could nearly see a distance of two meters he deactivated the bubble-shield, so none of the Ninjas would see how he survived that onslaught.

Soon the dust was completely settled and every single bystander's jaw dropped to their feet, seeing John standing there almost without a scratch.

Lee seemed to be in shock first too, but then decided on hitting John with another kick to the face. His opponent was still unbelievably fast, but this time John could react.

He moved Lee's leg to the side with his left hand, grabbed hold of Lee's neck with the right hand, pulled his combat knife out, turned around and held his knife at Lee's throat, ready to slice it at any moment and all of that he did in one quick motion.

Silence fell over the clearing.

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'He even overpowered my Hidden Lotus… He really must be a demon; there is no other way…' Lee thought, starting to panic, but he was too exhausted to show it.

"I surrender… You win…" was all he could say before he passed out from shock and exhaustion.

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"Great. Cortana did you come up with an escape plan so far?" John asked the artificial intelligence.

"Well… more or less, yes." Cortana answered "We have two possible choices: Either you take out all of them or we'll have to negotiate with them."

"Do you think I could take all of them? How is the armor doing?" the Chief asked.

"Even if you could beat all of them, which is unlikely, given the state of your armor and body, it would be futile. I've been reading their radio signals and it appears that even more back-up is ready to be called in. I'm afraid negotiations are our only chance in this case."

"You know I'm not that good at negotiating truces… it usually ends in carnage…" John replied, feeling very uncomfortable with this analysis.

"Okay, then I'll do the talking." Cortana said and with that she accessed the helmet's external speakers.

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Shikamaru couldn't believe what he had seen. Lee, the strongest Tai-Jutsu expert of Konoha had been beaten, even after opening 6 inner gates. He was getting anxious; this stranger was unlike any Ninja he had ever met before. Then the armored person spoke. But it was a female voice, much unlike before, thus rendering every single one of the Hidden Leaf Shinobi confused about the warrior's gender.

"We do not wish to fight you!" the voice said "Take us to your leader and there will be a way to solve this peacefully."

Shikamaru gave Yamato a quick sign and they both jumped down into the clearing next to Naruto.

"I'm not the Hokage of our village, but I am leading this Shinobi group for the time being." Shikamaru told the stranger "Please tell me who you are, where you came from and what your business is here."

"My name is Cortana, I am an artificial intelligence operating inside this suit of armor. My partner is John SPARTAN 117 and our duty is to protect mankind from any conceivable threat." The female voice answered in a friendly tone.

"Then why did you severely injure 5 of our people and accept a fight challenge against a 6th one? Doesn't this kind of go against your mission?" Shikamaru interrogated further.

Now the deep male voice of the warrior spoke again: "You people didn't leave me a choice when it came to accepting this one's challenge. As for the other 5, they attacked me first. I only acted out of self-defense."

"BULLSHIT!" Naruto shouted "Why would we believe a stranger that nearly killed our friends?"

Everyone looked at Naruto in surprise, even Shikamaru. It wasn't like him to show such distrust, yes almost hatred towards a person he had just met.

"Calm down Naruto! Don't let your friend's condition destroy your sense of judgment." Shikamaru told his comrade.

"But what if we take him to Konoha and he starts killing people over night?" Naruto retorted.

"Shut up you idiot, John is right!" The voice came from where Ino was treating the wounded. It was Sasuke, who had regained consciousness "I really did attack him first. The whole thing is a big misunderstanding."

Naruto returned his gaze towards the stranger with a sheepish grin: "Sorry, looks like you were innocent after all."

Shikamaru relaxed internally and made a suggestion to John: "How about we bring you to our Hokage? Of course you will have to return Lee to us first and promise not to cause any trouble. Deal?"

"Deal!" the green armored 'demon' answered, putting away his knife and handing Lee over to Naruto "But I'll have to grab all my gear, that's scattered around the clearing first."

"Take your time." Shikamaru replied, now definitely more relaxed about the situation than before.

It didn't take the Master Chief very long to grab all his stuff anyways. Kiba and Neji even offered a helping hand to carry some of it, which after some consideration and removing clips from the bigger constructs, John gladly accepted. Then the group started making their way back to Konoha.

End of Chapter 3

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**No real cliffhanger this time, but at least for the next chapter the action will subside a little bit, you know to let the plot develop. Stay tuned for more ;)**


	4. Chapter 4: A new beginning

**Sorry that I'm a little late, but merry Christmas anyways. My present to you: the 4th Chapter, that has been rewritten 4 separate times because of computer-based problems ^^' Anyways I still hope you enjoy reading and thank you for your patience with me :D**

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"They're back, Lady Fifth." A Chunin told Tsunade. She was relieved to hear that, especially without 'except for...' being added in. Shizune, who was standing next to her as usual, also showed a smile at the good news.

"Good. Bring them to me." She answered and waited patiently, while her bodyguards took positions that would easily enable them to overwhelm any unwanted guests. Or so they had thought.

But none of them had expected the stranger, who entered along with the group, to be this big. The man was at least 220 cm tall and wearing some unfamiliar kind of green full-body armor, which made him look even more menacing.

Shikamaru stepped forward and handed Tsunade a short written report on everything that had happened in the forest. After carefully reading through all of it Tsunade looked up and decided to break the awkward silence.

"So you have been responsible for all that commotion in the forest?" Tsunade directly addressed the man in front of her desk.

"More or less, yes. I did crash-land in the forest, but then was attacked by your people." The man responded in a deep voice that perfectly fit the overall 'bad ass' impression that he gave. Out of the corner of her eye Tsunade could even see Shizune tremble in either fear or awe at the stranger. "I guess it was all just a big misunderstanding." The armored man finished.

"That's one way to put it." Tsunade responded. "So, in this report it says your name is John. Is that correct?"

"It is. My rank is that of Master Chief Petty Officer, I participated in the SPARTAN II program and my military call signal is Sierra 117." John answered.

"I'm afraid I would lie if I said that I heard any of those names anywhere before. And I'm sure my Shinobi can relate. Where exactly are you from?" Tsunade inquired further. With that the Master Chief slowly raised his right hand, what caused the Hokage's bodyguards to tense up. But John didn't attack anyone. Instead a small, apparently naked woman appeared in his palm.

The jaws of several male Ninjas in the room dropped and some of the girls blushed bright red, either from embarrassment or jealousy. After a couple of seconds everyone had regained their composure and the small woman, who had been chuckling about the reaction until now, spoke up.

"My name is Cortana."the A.I. Introduced herself. "I am John's artificial intelligence and will gladly answer all your questions, as far as I am able to and without giving away classified information."

After Cortana and John had answered all of Tsunade's questions she waited for Uso Shinjitsu, the 'living lie-detector' from the Anbu Foundation, to present his results. The young man didn't take long before speaking.

"As crazy as it sounds, Lady Hokage, I couldn't detect a single lie in anything they have said. That means..." He was then interrupted by Tsunade herself.

"They're telling the truth." She was relieved to know that, because it meant that the Master Chief was no threat to the village. But then another, not unimportant thought crossed her mind.

"You will need a place to sleep and food I guess?" she asked John.

"I can stay awake much longer than a regular human and can survive long periods of time without eating or drinking." The Master Chief said. "However I do need food and sleep in the long run in order to stay alive." he added hesitantly after a few seconds.

"I see." Tsunade pondered "Then we'll have to find you a place to stay and you'll have to earn money through work. How good exactly are you at completing missions? Especially those of the more dangerous type?" she asked the soldier and wasn't disappointed with the answer.

"It's what I was made for." The SPATAN said confidently.

"Great! That settles that then. I'll let you know when I have a mission for you. But just so you know in advance: Most of these missions will probably be done in teams. Is team-work okay for you?" She added curiously.

"I have completed objectives in teams before." The warrior answered "And you could say that I'm never really alone." he added while looking down at the glowing woman in his palm.

"Good, now that that's out of the way we still have to find you a place to stay. How about..." But she was interrupted before she could even make a suggestion.

"He can stay with me!" Naruto shouted. Everybody looked at him in surprise, but after giving it a moment of thought Tsunade actually found the idea pretty good. When Naruto had returned with Sasuke and Sakura after the war, they had all been rewarded in various ways. Among those rewards had been huge mansions in the old Uchiha district, which were far too large for a single person anyways, so there would be more than enough space for the Master Chief to use.

"Do you accept this offer?" Tsunade asked the Chief.

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John thought about this very carefully, looking at the young man who had made the offer. Naruto was showing the most genuine smile John had seen in ages. After some seconds of consideration and making sure Cortana had no objections, he accepted, which made Naruto's grin widen even more. John didn't really understand the reason behind the smile or the offer in general, but looking at his current situation it was his best option to accept the blond Ninja's invitation.

Soon they were on their way and Naruto instantly started asking a thousand questions about John, his past, his training, his comrades... basically about everything there was to know about SPARTAN 117. Quite soon he had enough of the quiz. Luckily Cortana took over his part in the conversation, thus preventing him from saying something that would probably be considered rude. The blond man didn't even seem to notice.

"All right, here we are!" These words were what John had wished Naruto to say for what felt like an eternity. Given a situation like this, his advanced senses could even be seen as a disadvantage, that was the SPARTAN's lesson of the day.

Naruto gave him a quick tour through the mansion, which appeared even larger from the inside. It was only a 3-story building, but so wide that an entire battalion of ODSTs could live in it, probably even giving everyone their own separate room.

"If you ever need anything, just let me know." Naruto said with a fox-like smile.

"Er... thank you." The Master Chief answered insecurely. He couldn't help it, he just wasn't used to such nice hospitality.

"You're welcome." Naruto said and with that he gave John a key to the house and led him to a huge room. "Here you go, make yourself at home ."

The room was very large, roughly 70 m² according to Cortana's estimation. It had a very comfortable-looking, king-sized bed, a door that led to a separate bathroom, several seats and tables, a couch, quite a few closets and a huge window plus balcony.

"I really appreciate it, but..." John started, but was cut off mid-sentence by Naruto before he could humbly decline the offered room.

"If you think this room is big, you should have a look at mine." he said winking at John. At that moment the doorbell rang and Naruto excused himself to go answer the door. John took the opportunity to lay down his weapons on the floor.

Since he didn't know when or how he would be assigned to a mission, he decided that after 4 years it was time to finally get out of his armor for once. But just as he was about to start by taking off his helmet, Naruto rushed into the room.

"Hey guess what! We've been assigned to a mission as a team of three." he shouted happily.

"Three?" John asked as he lowered his hands from his helmet which he now hadn't taken off after all. "So that means you, me and...?"

Just then a girl with long dark hair and a slightly timid expression on her face turned around the corner and stepped into the room. John remembered her, she had been in the second team he had 'met' in the forest.

"That would be me." The girl said. "I'm Hinata Hyuga, nice to meet you." she added while bowing.

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**And that's all for Chapter 4. I hope you liked it and won't kill me even though my Chapters always take their sweet time, but it's not my fault :( I'm really busy with a lot of private stuff at the moment AND my PC is still well... shit. So my Laptop here will have to do until further notice^^**

**Stay awesome :)**


	5. Chapter 5: Old enemies, New friends?

**Hey guys, thanks for your patience. I've made this Chapter extra long to make up for lost time, but as I said before I'm really busy at the moment, so I'm glad I could actually finish this Chapter at all. I hope you enjoy it and as always please don't forget to review :D**

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„Welcome back John." Tsunade greeted the SPARTAN. "Looks like I've got your first assignment already."

John along with Naruto and Hinata were standing in the Hokage's office in front of her desk for the second time today. He expected what was coming to be some sort of mission briefing and he wasn't disappointed.

"We received a distress call from a small nearby village, about 10 miles down south. The enemy attacking the village seems to be using unknown ranged weapons, kind of like you John. If they are your people I expect you to stop them from harming anyone." Tsunade now also looked at Naruto and Hinata "If they're not John's allies, handle them like any other enemy. Understood that?"

"Affirmative." John said instantly, his serious attitude clearly pleasing the woman across the desk.

"Sure thing, granny!" Naruto exclaimed, which the Hokage seemed to be trying to ignore. Hinata simply nodded.

"Good." Tsunade answered, clearly being glad to get rid of Naruto for now. "You're dismissed!"

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The three of them quickly returned to their respective quarters to gather some supplies for the mission and they were on their way only a few minutes later.

John had picked his trusty Assault Rifle and the DMR for this mission, along with a couple of both frag and plasma grenades. His heavy armor didn't allow him to jump from branch to branch through the forest like his companions though. That and both he and Cortana were agreeing that it looked ridiculous, or at least HE would if he tried out that way of traveling.

So instead of going up into the trees John settled for running on the ground supporting himself with the thruster pack every now and then.

"The distress call said something about unknown enemies and warriors made entirely out of metal." Hinata read the intel-scroll aloud. "John, could those enemies come from the same place as you?"

The 'unknown enemies' could in John's opinion very well be Covenant forces if they followed him through the rift, but warriors composed of metal? That almost sounded like the attackers were SPARTANs. If that was the case, then John would probably be able to convince them to work with him, or Cortana would if he failed.

"They could be from my world, but I won't know for sure until I see them." John answered the girl, who had still been awaiting an answer. "But if they are, I'm sure I can handle them." He added.

Soon they exited the forest, Naruto being the first to land on the meadow, closely followed by Hinata and John. In the distance they could see a huge cloud of smoke and John figured, that those were the remains of their objective.

"Crap! We might be too late… Let's hurry!" Naruto shouted, all of them setting off in the same instant, charging towards what probably had been a beautiful village at some point, but the closer they got, the more obvious the destruction became.

Not a single house was left unharmed or even inhabitable. It was a sight of horror. Very few burnt corpses were scattered around the village, but the majority of the inhabitants was gone. Completely vanished.

"Damn it." John mumbled. "We should have gotten here sooner."

"It might not be too late. Let's search for survivors, any trace of them." Naruto said. "I refuse to believe we lost the entire village, just because we didn't get here fast enough."

So the three of them split up and searched for clues. John went inside a house to investigate a bit about the kind of damage it suffered.

"Plasma blasts." Cortana analyzed a burnt hole in the wall. "Looks like we really are dealing with the Covenant here."

"But what about these?" John responded, pointing towards a series of small holes in the walls and the floor. "These holes were obviously caused by bullets. Could it really be that SPARTANs were involved here?"

"I know you don't want to believe it, but that would be the most obvious answer." Cortana said, not sounding too comfortable about it.

At that moment John heard a loud noise coming from outside, like something big crashed into the ground.

The Master Chief didn't waste a second and was outside in a flash, meeting Naruto and Hinata who were just as surprised about the crashed package as he was. But in opposition to them, John was glad to see this sort of unexpected supply. Directly in front of them was a Warthog with a Gauss-Canon mounted on its back. John was the first to take a step towards it.

"Er… is that…?" Naruto started

"It's going to help us quite a bit." John answered, a hint of optimism in his voice.

Then he saw it, a movement on his motion tracker. He instantly raised his hand to tell his companions to quietly follow him, while pulling out his DMR.

Luckily the two Ninjas understood his signal and complied, following the Chief to the remnant of what once had been a carpet inside one of the destroyed houses. But since more than half of the carpet had been burnt along with most of the village, the hidden trapdoor beneath it was visible.

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Naruto didn't know what to expect. John had somehow sensed someone being down there, and the green-armored demon had already proven himself as a formidable warrior, so it was unlikely for him to be wrong about this.

They all looked at each other for a moment, before Naruto decided to carefully open the trapdoor. To his surprise it wasn't even locked, so he easily pulled it open, muffled cries being audible from inside.

The blond Shinobi shot a quick glance at Hinata, who gave a quick nod and started descending into the cellar first.

"Hello? Is anyone down here?" Hinata asked in a soothing tone. "We've come from Konoha to help you. You don't need to be afraid anymore."

Naruto himself followed down and to his surprise the place was lit. He could see at least 50 people, who were slowly realizing that they had nothing to fear anymore. That all changed when John jumped down behind them.

Most of their eyes widened in terror, some of them only looking confused.

"Behind you!" A man shouted. "What the hell is that? Is that another one of these metal fiends?"

Now it was the Hidden Leaf Ninja's turn to be confused. Of course John wasn't an every-day sight, and apparently the villagers had never seen someone like him before, but then why were they so very afraid of him?

"Everybody calm down." Naruto said. "He is with us, he won't hurt you. In fact we're here to help."

Now Hinata spoke up: "Can you tell us what happened here?"

The man that had shouted at them started to relax a little and came a few steps towards them.

"It all happened so fast." The man said. "They came out of nowhere, these reptile-like creatures and their puppets. I had never seen or even heard of anything like that in my life. It was a massacre."

The man began trembling, but after a moment to steel himself he continued. "The creatures were tall. About as tall as your companion over there, but the true horror was in their weapons and puppets. They destroyed our houses without even touching them…"

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"I know this is hard for you and I apologize for asking, but can you tell us what these 'puppets' looked like?" John interrupted the villager.

The man looked at him with slight distrust, but decided on trusting the two Ninjas in front of him.

"They all had different shapes and sizes. There were three of them. One was looking like a strange kind of bird. It was a bit smaller than you" He pointed at Naruto, "and could fly. Another one was carrying some kind of battle staff and was almost as tall as that guy" He now pointed at the Master Chief himself, "and the last one was about twice the size of the one with the staff, and it shot exploding fireballs from its shoulder while turning our homes into sieves with its arms."

Now that didn't sound like there were any SPARTANs involved at all. John didn't know whether to feel relieved or disappointed. On one hand it meant he wouldn't have to fight a rogue SPARTAN, which would have been a pain in the ass. But it also meant that they were dealing with an entirely new threat, one that even he had never seen or heard of before.

At least now the goal was clear: To stop the Covenant and their new 'puppets' from endangering any more lives.

Hinata tried calming the other people down, telling them that nothing would hurt them anymore while Naruto called the Hokage to ask for further instructions, now that the situation was a bit clearer. Meanwhile John went back to the Warthog, to check on fuel, weapons and if it survived the crash in a somewhat usable state.

He was relieved to see, that it got away with only a few scratches. In addition to that the mounted Gauss cannon was fully loaded and on the passenger seat John found a small grenade launcher that was using sticky grenades, of which there were several ones to go along with it.

"See, I was right about your luck after all." Cortana said with a smug tone.

"Let's hope my luck doesn't run out too soon then." The Master Chief answered "Because whatever these 'puppets' are, they seem dangerous. All the more so, since they appear to work with the Covenant."

"I would bet my life on it." Cortana said, especially emphasizing the word 'life' for some reason.

"Cortana did you…" John started, but was interrupted by Naruto.

"Hey John! I have new orders from granny Tsunade! Could you come over here for a second?" the blond Ninja shouted.

John sighed and got back on his feet to listen to what Naruto had to say. According to Naruto's excited expression this had to be big news. But John was about to be severely disappointed.

"Tsunade is sending reinforcements. We're supposed to stay here and protect the people until they arrive. After that we will start evacuating the civilians." Naruto said, his excited expression and tone very quickly transforming into a disappointed and bored frown.

John couldn't help but notice Hinata slightly blushing and giggling at this. He was confused. The 'joke' Naruto just conveyed was beyond bad, yet this girl was laughing at it and suddenly getting all shy towards the blond man. He didn't bother to think about this any further, but noticed that Cortana seemed a bit angry at his confusion, as he felt a bit cold all of a sudden.

The SPARTAN turned away from the Ninjas and asked so quietly, that only Cortana could hear him: "Cortana, what's the problem? Did I say something wrong or why did you get mad so suddenly?"

"It's not what you said, but what you thought, that ticked me off a little." The A.I. answered. Now John was even more confused, but before he could say anything, Cortana added: "We'll have to have a serious talk about you and being human one day." And just like that the cold feeling disappeared from John's brain.

"Are you alright, John?" Hinata asked "Have you sensed enemies closing in?" Both she and Naruto looked concerned.

"No, it's nothing. Don't worry." John said calmly, even though that was the exact opposite of the situation. At least concerning himself. But he didn't want to make them worry about him, especially when there was an important mission to carry out.

"If you say so." Naruto said, but Hinata still had a concerned look on her face. She didn't say anything though.

"Alright we should probably tell these people that they'll be evacuated." Naruto suggested.

"Indeed." The Master Chief agreed.

Telling the villagers about the Hokage's orders, explaining why all of this was necessary and assuring them that John was not a threat to them took the team until the sun began to set. Then John suddenly saw them. Three unknown contacts popped up on his motion tracker, closing in really fast from the forest. He grabbed his DMR, just in case, but it turned out he wouldn't have to use it.

Just as expected it was the reinforcement team from the Hidden Leaf village, consisting of two people he had already met: Shikamaru Nara, the strategist who had led the team when John had first talked to the Ninjas and the blonde girl, whose name John didn't know yet. The third person was a very pale-skinned male Shinobi, with several scrolls tied on his back.

"Sorry it took us so long." Shikamaru greeted the Master Chief and the others "We would have been here sooner, but somebody had to fix her hair first." He shot a blaming glare towards the girl.

"Hey don't look at me like that Shikamaru. We still made it in time didn't we?" She retorted, suddenly looking slightly pissed.

"Whatever you say Ino. Man, why do women have to be so troublesome?" Shikamaru sighed. "Sai, could you please tell your girlfriend not to waste so much time before her next mission?"

"Sure thing." The pale man gave an apologetic smile.

"Alright, now that that's out of the way… let's rest for the night." The pineapple-haired Ninja suggested.

"What?" Naruto exclaimed "Why rest? Can't we just finish the mission now? It would only take an hour or so."

John couldn't believe that someone as dense as Naruto could actually be a respected member of society. Apparently all the other Shinobi shared his opinion, as they all either stared at him like he was retarded, chuckled at his exclamation or did both.

"Naruto… Those people aren't Shinobi. They can't keep up with us, so they will at least take 5 hours to get to Konoha. And besides the fact that the roads are dangerous at night, I'm pretty sure that all of them are tired after today's excitement." Shikamaru explained to the blond blockhead.

The reason why he was a respected Shinobi wasn't hard to understand for John. Shikamaru was, as far as John could tell, a very down-to-earth man, very intelligent and thus an excellent strategist. He reminded the Master Chief a lot of Captain Keyes.

"Alright everyone listen up!" Ino shouted, so that all the villagers could hear her. "We're gonna camp for the night and head for Konoha tomorrow morning! We'll stand guard for the night so get all the rest you can, you're gonna need it!"

While the villagers set everything up to rest for the night, the Konoha Ninjas now had to figure out who would keep watch during the night first.

"I'll do it." John suggested. "I don't get tired quickly. I will be able to keep watch the entire night."

"Not an option." Shikamaru answered. "I'm glad you trust your abilities that much, but we'll need everybody in top condition tomorrow. You can take the first shift, I'll take the second and Naruto the last."

"Alright." John said, even though he knew he probably wouldn't be able to catch any sleep this night anyways. He had a talk with Cortana waiting for him.

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**So many possible cliffhangers that stayed unused O.o Well I hope you liked this Chapter, more will be coming up, even though it will probably take a while ^^' Now that I finally decided what kinds of bad guys I'm going to use, at least that's out of the way though. Thanks a lot for your positive feedback so far and stay awesome guys :D**


	6. Chapter 6: A new Threat!

**Hey guys, sorry for the wait, but I keep my promises. Chapter 6 is finally up and I believe it's the longest chapter yet. Btw I got asked whether there will be Prometheans in this story and the answer is NO. The prometheans first appeared before the Chief in Halo 4 and this story takes place before that. Instead I decided on a different kind of enemy.**

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The Master Chief started his night watch with a stroll towards a close-by rock. Close, but far enough not to be heard by the others.

"Cortana." John started "Come on, you're acting strange. What's bothering you?"

The A.I. didn't answer at first, leaving John dumbfounded. He almost repeated his question when Cortana finally spoke up.

"Beautiful night, isn't it?" was what she said. John didn't know how to respond. In his opinion this was completely beside the point, but knowing Cortana, she'd probably have a very good reason for responding that way. He had to ask though, just to be sure.

"What? I'm not sure I understand…" John tried to say, but was cut off by his artificial companion.

"That's exactly what I mean!" Cortana said. Or rather shouted. John was taken by complete surprise at that sudden outburst. "It's all about fighting, being efficient and being a good soldier with you! You never step out of line, you never disobey orders, but you also never think about anything outside of combat. What are you, John? Man or machine? Sometimes you make it hard for me to tell."

To say that the SPARTAN was surprised would have been the understatement of the millennium. He felt a little hurt by her words too, but giving it some serious thought, he could understand her point. At least to a certain degree. Still, that kind of outburst was more than untypical for the ever cool and collected Cortana.

"I do what is necessary." Was all he could muster in that state of surprise.

"Necessary my virtual ass!" Cortana sighed. "I clearly read your confusion, at Ms. Hyuga's attitude. The way she laughed at a clearly bad joke. Do you mean to tell me you didn't notice the obvious by now?"

"What in the world are you talking about?" John asked desperately, his confusion growing stronger by the minute. Cortana was obviously acting weird and John could only suspect the possible cause of her emotional outbreak. Though that was something he didn't want to believe.

"Affection John! Love! Ever heard those words before? Hinata is obviously head over heels for Naruto." Cortana said. "And apparently you are as dense as he is, otherwise you would have noticed. I mean it's not like she's really hiding it."

"Is that really the reason for your anger?" John asked the artificial intelligence. He really hadn't noticed. Mostly because he usually didn't pay attention to such 'trivial matters'. He was used to focusing on the mission and the mission only. He himself had never shared such a relationship with another person. The closest any of his relationships ever came to this was his with Cortana, though this could hardly be compared to a loving couple. "I'm sorry." Was all he could think of to say.

"Well, I guess after all these years of being a killing machine it's hard for you to regain your humanity. Please don't take this the wrong way, but for your own good, be a bit less of a perfect soldier and a bit more of an imperfect man." Cortana said, apparently calmed down a bit.

Thinking that the matter was settled for now, the Master Chief returned to the camp fire, that some villagers had made.

"I'm sorry." The voice came from behind the Master Chief, so he turned around to see who it belonged to. It was the man from earlier that had nearly experienced a mental breakdown after seeing the SPARTAN for the first time. "For earlier I mean. I was just so scared."

"Don't worry about it." John tried to reassure the man. "You're not the first person to ever react this way towards me."

"Still I feel bad about it. After all you came to protect us… right?" the man asked hesitantly.

"That is my mission." The Chief answered.

"My name is Tetsumaru by the way." The man eyed the Master Chief carefully, making him feel a little uncomfortable. Just as John was about to ask what was up he continued. "I don't know if it's rude to ask, but… do you know the legend of the Nobleman of Death?"

"I'm afraid not. I'm not really from around these parts." John answered. And since he didn't have anything better to do than watching the motion tracker in his visor, he added: "Care to tell me?"

Tetsumaru's face brightened at that request.

"Sure. I'd love to. So a couple of years back a group of five men from our village was in the mountains to hunt some deer. They were doing really well until they were ambushed by enemy Ninjas. In a matter of seconds the hunters became the hunted. Two of our hunters were killed while on the run. The other three tried to hide in an old hut that they had found, but it turned out to be a death trap. The Ninjas easily spotted them and were closing in. Two of the hunters tried to secure the front door while one of them took care of the back door. However the front door was busted down and the two securing it were killed. The last survivor already saw his fate sealed, when suddenly a lightning struck into the hut, directly in front of him. One of the Shinobi chose the opportunity to strike, but he only hit a hard metal armor, for in the lightning had appeared a mighty noble warrior in glorious armor. He who should henceforth been known as the Nobleman of Death counterattacked the enemy Shinobi and easily annihilated all of them. He told the last surviving hunter to run and not turn back, so that's what he did. He returned to our village to tell his story, but when we checked the place, we only found the dead bodies of the Ninjas. No sign of said warrior." Tetsumaru concluded. Or at least John thought it was a conclusion as the man in front of him didn't seem to have anything left to tell.

"If you never found that warrior, how do you know your hunter told the truth?" John asked. It was a legitimate question. That story was ludicrous, even for this strange world.

"The one hunter that had survived was my older brother. He wouldn't lie about his friends' deaths. Also they could never have beaten the Ninjas by themselves, so I believe him." Tetsumaru said, giving the Master Chief a stern look. "I figured that you might know something about that story, seeing as you quite closely resemble that Nobleman of Death."

John mentally face-palmed. How could he be so dense? If this story was true, that would mean, that another SPARTAN had come to this world before him. And that SPARTAN was quite likely to still be there.

"Maybe that story of yours isn't so ludicrous after all." The Chief told Tetsumaru absentmindedly.

"Hey John!" John turned around to see who had called him. It turned out to be Shikamaru. "I'm gonna take over now. You should get some rest."

John simply nodded and headed for his resting place. He felt like he could fall asleep and never wake up again. The battles of the previous day did take a toll on his body after all. He laid down on his mat and felt himself slowly drifting off to a light sleep.

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The next morning came quickly and the villagers started getting ready for their trip to Konoha. Shikamaru organized the preparations for the journey, while the other Shinobi were helping the villagers to pack their belongings. Except for Naruto and Sai, who were patrolling the area to keep the group safe from potential attackers.

When they were all ready to leave, Shikamaru called the team together to give instructions.

"Sai, Ino and I will secure the front of the group in a triangular formation. Naruto, Hinata and John, you will be doing the same thing for the rear. Got it?" the pineapple-haired strategist asked.

Everyone nodded in unison and got in position. John took the driver's seat in the warthog, Hinata got in on the passenger seat and Naruto, after agreeing with John that having him at the canon would be too dangerous, sat on a piece of metal above his teammates.

They had been on their way for maybe 15 minutes, when Naruto spoke up. "Hey John, what do you think about these metal warriors, that the villagers told us about? Think they might become a problem to us?"

"Probably, yes. I can't say for sure until we meet them, but SPARTANs would never attack innocent civilians. Whatever those warriors might be, I doubt I have faced them before." John admitted. Not knowing what he was up against, was worse than being faced with a strong enemy.

"Well too bad we don't have any fire-style users with us. Otherwise we could just melt those metal guys and make new Kunais for the Academy. Granny Tsunade would love not to have to spend money on those resources. She would instead probably waste it with gambling which in her case equals losing. Am I right Hinata?" The blond Ninja flashed a smile at his female companion.

Hinata instantly blushed a bit and chuckled at his remark. John was now paying more attention, after his 'talk' with Cortana last night and he could see, that the girl was getting nervous. This was the first time in a long time that he was paying enough attention to other people's behavior to read an emotion such as nervousness. He didn't say anything, but decided to pay more attention like this in the future. It might come in handy one day. He felt a slight warmth in his mind and could instantly picture Cortana's satisfied expression.

After about an hour of slow-paced travel an explosion boomed way behind them. John already knew shit was about to hit the fan. "Cortana, is it possible for you to take over the turret?" John asked, even though he already knew the answer.

"Of course not." The A.I. answered. "Warthogs and their turrets are mostly mechanical structures. They're not made for A.I. controlled firing or driving."

The Master Chief hit the brakes and the Warthog quickly came to a standstill. It could only be a matter of minutes before the enemies arrived.

"Guess we have a fight coming?" Naruto asked rhetorically. "Good, because I'm really curious about those metal warriors. Hinata tell Shikamaru to keep moving and that we'll handle the situation."

While Naruto was giving the shy girl in the passenger seat instructions, the Chief was already outside the SUV and hopping onto the turret. He decided that that alone might be too dangerous so he handed Naruto a portable bubble-shield projector.

"Take this Naruto. I need you to throw it between us and the enemies in case their fire-power outclasses ours."

The blond Ninja looked at the object in his hand for a second. Then he looked up at the SPARTAN with a determined grin. "You got it. Hinata can you tell us where they are?"

"Got'em!" John shouted before the young woman could even say a word. In that same instant he fired a shot at a tree about 20 meters away from them. If his motion tracker wasn't broken, that was where an enemy had appeared only a split-second before he had fired.

Out of the cloud of smoke jumped a red and violet figure and landed right in front of the Gauss canon. John couldn't believe his eyes, he had never seen anything like that. The figure was about as tall as he was, but it appeared to be completely composed out of metal and only slightly resembled the shape of a human body. In its right hand the figure held a long staff with a three-bladed tip, which gave it an aura of authority, but at the same time made it seem even more lethal.

"_Hello, stranger." _The figure said and with that it swung its bladed staff towards the Master Chief. John was quick enough to jump off the turret in time, but when he saw what had happened to said canon he was shocked. The blade had cleanly cut through the metal construction and split it in two.

"What the hell is that thing?!" Naruto shouted from up in a tree.

"No idea! But it's at least as dangerous as it looks!" John answered.

"_Target located._" The figure said and pointed the staff towards John. A blast of plasma came flying straight towards John and John was too startled to react. The plasma hit his shields and almost completely depleted them. Then a second shot was fired. John snapped out of his shock and quickly jumped out of the enemy's sight behind a tree.

"Cortana, what is that thing?" John asked.

"It appears to be some kind of robot." Cortana answered. "Based on what I've learned from observing, there should be no way for such advanced technology to exist in this world." She sounded nervous.

"The Covenant could be behind this, but what reason would they have? Didn't the Elites sign a peace treaty with the UNSC?"

Before Cortana could answer that question the tree John hid behind was cut down in a single swipe. "_I_ _found you stranger._" The robot said. "_Elimination protocol engaged._"

With that the robot slashed its staff towards the Master Chief again, but this time John was quick enough to counter. He caught the staff in his hand below the blades and quickly turned for a roundhouse kick to the robot's chest. To his surprise the robot did not break or even let go of his staff, but just flew a few meters backwards before landing after a gracious backflip.

"RASENGAN!" was the last thing John heard before seeing the robot explode into pieces under the force of the blond Shinobi's technique.

"Are you alright?" Naruto asked the SPARTAN with a concerned look. Only now the Master Chief felt a slight pain in his palm where he had caught the robot's staff. That hit had a lot more force behind it than he had anticipated.

"I'm fine. Good work." He answered shrugging the stinging feeling in his hand off. He went over to the remains of the robot to see the staff still intact. John didn't think too long about it and just grabbed the weapon. Chief Mendez had once told him and the other SPARTAN trainees 'If your enemy gives you a weapon, take it. It might be the last chance you get'. Maybe he could figure out how it worked and use it in battle.

"Watch out!" Hinata cried out. John and Naruto instantly jumped back, one second later and they would have been smashed. A gigantic figure crashed down right where the two of them had stood just a second ago. At first John thought it would have to be hunters, but the creature he saw before him was nothing like the walking tanks of the covenant. It wasn't even a creature, but a robot as large as two hunters combined.

"_TERMINATE YOUR FUNCTIONS, HUMANS!_" The robot shouted in a deep, metallic voice. While saying that it extended its arms to reveal two Gatling machine guns, one on each arm instead of hands and an ominous looking tube on its shoulder.

"Okay never mind that last one. What the actual hell is this now?" Naruto shouted.

John was about to attack the huge robot when he saw a red flicker on his motion tracker behind him. He drew his energy sword and turned around just in time to block the other energy sword coming down on his face. Before him actually stood an Elite Ultra wielding an energy sword and giving John the most hateful glare since the first time John had met the Arbiter face to face.

"Demon!" The elite shouted. "Your reign on the battlefield ends today and at my hands."

John was in a bad spot. He shoved his adversary back, but he knew that in a sword-fight he had no chance. His UNSC training never covered that, let alone energy swords which were a whole lot different to handle.

"I'm a little busy here guys. You have to handle the big one!" John shouted and hoped Naruto would hear him. He grabbed the shotgun from his back and unlocked the trigger. Then the Elite dashed forward, sword extended.

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Naruto had understood the SPARTAN, but didn't have the time to respond as the tube on the metal puppet's shoulder launched something in his direction. Luckily he was quick enough to evade before the projectile blew up the branch on which he had been a second earlier.

He threw a couple of Kunais at the puppet, but as he had expected they were of no use against the metal chassis of their opponent.

Suddenly the giant turned away from him and pointed his 'hands' directly towards Hinata. The barrels began to spin and a storm of extremely fast projectiles was unleashed towards the lavender-haired Kunoichi.

"Hinata! Watch out!" Naruto screamed, fearing to lose his friend. But he was astonished when he saw her reaction to the attack.

"Eight Trigrams Sixty-four Palms!" Hinata shouted and unleashed a flurry of chakra-enhanced palm strikes in all directions, effectively blocking every single projectile coming her way. "Naruto, attack it now while it's busy!"

"Right!" Naruto shouted. He charged up an enormous amount of Chakra in his palm and used it to create his most powerful technique. "Rasenshuriken!"

The wind-chakra-infused ball of energy flew towards the enemy at incredible speed and it would obliterate the mechanical warrior. At least that was the way Naruto had planned it. What he had not accounted for, was the tube on the figure's shoulder to turn around and fire a large projectile directly into his Rasenshuriken.

When the two of them hit they went up in a huge explosion that covered most of the clearing in a cloud of dust and smoke. Silence ensued.

Three seconds later as the dust was about to settle Naruto heard a 'bang' from where John was fighting that other creature. After that the Master Chief stepped onto the clearing a glowing sword-like weapon in one hand, a strange-looking metal rod in the other.

"Hey, any idea how we get that thing down?" Naruto asked the SPARTAN.

"Have you tried that glowing-orb-technique of yours yet?" John answered him. "That seemed pretty effective the last time."

"I doubt…" Naruto started, but was interrupted by the metal giant.

"_TARGET FOUND! BEGINNING TERMINATION!_"

Naruto found himself at a need to evade another projectile. Meanwhile John had put away the sword and thrown a metal ball at the puppet. Before Naruto could even wonder why John would throw a ball at this monstrosity the ball blew up and ripped off one of the metal giant's legs, leaving it to hop around on the remaining one.

Naruto jumped down next to the Chief as they took cover behind a big rock.

"Hey. Remember that thing I gave you earlier in the Warthog?" John asked.

"Yeah, you told me to throw it between us and the enemy, if their power outclasses ours." Naruto said, proud that he remembered it so well. Hinata suddenly landed next to them and the machine opened fire at the rock they were hiding behind. At least their enemy didn't seem to be of the genius kind.

"Right, forget what I told you. Throw that thing directly at it, so that you hit the robot." John told Naruto.

"Robot?"

"That huge thing that's attacking us. That's a robot. We will need a distraction though. If that thing destroys the projector before it activates… that would be bad." John explained.

"Leave that to me." Hinata finally said. "I'll get its attention long enough for you to go through with that plan."

Naruto was a bit worried. "You sure you want to do this?"

Hinata simply nodded, blushing lightly, and then jumped away effectively gaining the robot's attention. "Eight Trigrams Sixty-four Palms!"

"Now!" John shouted and Naruto threw the object he had been given. It hit the robot and when it did it released a huge bubble around the robot. At the same time John dashed towards the Warthog and grabbed something big. Then he returned to the rock and pointed the large construct at the robot, which at the moment was trying to destroy the barrier from inside by shooting it.

When the bubble broke down and the robot turned around to once again shoot at them, Naruto was certain they had failed. But in this very moment John unleashed a huge red beam towards the metal giant, which ripped right through the enemy and resulted in the robot blowing up. For a second Naruto could've sworn to have heard the robot scream a final "_NOOOOOO!_" before it was destroyed.

When they all realized that the fight was over, Naruto broke the silence. "Holy crap, what was that attack?"

John turned towards him. "That was my SPARTAN-Laser. I only have a very limited amount of shots with this, but it was the only heavy weapon besides the destroyed Gauss canon that I had with me."

"Awesome…" Naruto said in awe. Then another thought struck his mind. "Hinata! Are you okay? Where are you?"

"Over here!" Hinata answered. When they got to her Naruto saw that she had been hit by a piece of metal and was bleeding from her thigh. "I'm glad you did it.." was all she could say before she fell unconscious in Naruto's arms.

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John could hear Cortana say "Aww." in his mind, but was worried about her condition. Naruto was frantically trying to wake her up. Upon closer inspection John decided that the injury wasn't lethal and told Naruto so to calm him down.

"You should carry her to the warthog, Naruto. And make sure to stop the bleeding with some cloth. I'm gonna collect some things that might help us and be with you in a minute." John told the blond Shinobi, who simply nodded and took their teammate to the SUV. John picked up the bladed staff that he had to drop earlier and found the rocket launcher from the robot's shoulder to be mostly intact. He grabbed both and then returned to the Warthog. He wondered if anyone would actually believe their story back in the village.

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**Thanks a lot for** **reading and hopefully reviewing :) A lot of you might be confused about the robots that appeared in this Chapter as I told you they are no Prometheans. For all you confused readers out there: All will be explained in due time. Until then keep wondering and please tell me your theories. I'm curious what your ideas are now with this new twist :3**


	7. Chapter 7: Cortana's Rampancy

**Hey everyone, I know it took a lot of time, but here is the next Chapter, which I finally found the time to finish. To answer the question where my inspiration for the enemy robots came from: I took them directly from the game "Metal Arms Glitch in the System". The ones I described in the previous Chapter are the Sentinel and the Titan. However they'll have a different origin story than in the game (obviously xD). Thanks a lot for you patience and please enjoy this new Chapter that will hopefully explain at least a few things that might have caused confusion :)**

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„You do realize how ridiculous that sounds, right?" Tsunade asked the three in front of her in disbelief. "Warriors completely composed of metal, that attacked you and sliced up a strange means of transportation you found?"

"I wouldn't believe it either if I hadn't been there, granny. But every word he said is true!" Naruto answered, pointing to the Master Chief.

John could understand the Hokage's disbelief. Like Cortana had said, in this world people couldn't have figured out such advanced technology yet and the Covenant usually didn't send robots into battle. And even if they did, they would probably be designed in the same way everything was in the Covenant: round and smooth and mostly in a shade of purple or blue. However none of these aspects applied to the robots they had encountered in the forest.

"We do have proof though." The SPARTAN interrupted the Hokage and the blonde Shinobi, who were fighting over the fact that the latter called the former 'granny'. "I took some of the robots' equipment with me." He added dropping the bladed blaster-staff on the Hokage's desk.

Tsunade eyed the construct carefully. "Interesting… I've never seen any weapon like this before. Shizune? Any thoughts about this souvenir?"

"I don't think it's chakra-powered. Thus it's probably not crafted by anyone from our world." The dark haired woman said, analyzing the weapon before her. "Could this be from your world, Master Chief?" She asked the SPARTAN, who towered above her like a Biju.

"It could be. I've never seen this particular kind of weapon before, but the technology where I come from is advanced enough to build such a weapon." John answered truthfully. "However I've been kind of… out for quite a while before I landed here, so I could have just missed its invention." He added in a calm tone. He could see the woman before him shiver lightly, but dismissed it as 'unimportant' and 'beside the point' and waited for a response.

"Well… That's unsettling. To think somebody controls this kind of power." Tsunade said with a troubled look on her face. "At least the villagers are safe. You are dismissed until further notice. Hinata, you should go to the Hospital and get yourself checked by a medical-ninja. Naruto and John, you're free to take some time off."

John nodded, but Naruto had a worried expression looking at his dark-haired friend. "Are you gonna be alright Hinata? Do you want us to accompany you to the hospital?"

The girl instantly blushed and responded in a quiet voice: "It's okay Naruto. You don't need to worry about me."

"If you say so…" Naruto said and left the office like that.

"HE DID NOT JUST DO THAT!" Cortana shouted into John's ear. "Go get him and let me have word with him!" John was dumbfounded by this outbreak and did the only thing that came to his mind: comply. He quickly went into the corridor after Naruto, grabbed his wrist and pulled him aside.

"Hey what are you doing?" Naruto asked surprised. Instead of answering, John opened his palm to have Cortana's hologram show up in it.

"Naruto, please don't take this the wrong way, but has anybody ever told you that you have NO IDEA about women?" the A.I. asked.

"What? Why? What is this all about?" Naruto asked in panic, but then realization seemed to strike him. "Wait. Do you mean because of Hinata just now?"

"Well what do you know; you at least have a brain it seems." Cortana said in a pissed tone. "Why are you not taking her to the hospital?"

Naruto became flustered, but quickly replied: "She said she was fine and that I wouldn't need to worry…"

"Bullshit!" Cortana interrupted him "Yes she said that and it's probably the truth, but that doesn't mean that she wouldn't like to be accompanied."

John wanted to side with Naruto on this one, but didn't dare to speak up against a furious Cortana, who seemed to be calming down, at least to a certain degree.

"Why do women always have to be so complicated?" Naruto groaned and said the exact words that John had thought this exact same moment.

"If women are in fact so complicated, how come there are always men who understand us?" Cortana asked. "Although I have to admit that those are usually the minority." She added cockily, glancing at John from the corner of her holographic eyes.

"Alright I get it." Naruto said, feeling defeated. "Thanks for telling me though." He gave a slight smile before taking off back towards the office. "Hey Hinata!"

Cortana was obviously pleased with her work and turned to smile at the SPARTAN before deactivating her hologram. Meanwhile John was processing what had just happened. It quickly dawned on him.

"Cortana, are you playing matchmaker for those two?" John asked his virtual companion amused.

"So what if I were to do so? Would you have a problem with it?" Cortana retorted in an amused tone of her own.

"It's just that I can't think of a reason why you would act so rashly…"John answered anxiously.

"Oh." And like that Cortana's happiness had vanished and been replaced by sorrow. "We both know the reason, don't we?" Cortana said. "I've been created eight years ago, John. Eight! A.I.s degenerate after seven years."

"No." John said, not wanting to accept what that meant. "Halsey can fix you! If we manage to get back to our world we can find Halsey and have her fix you."

"The rampancy is a point of no return John. We should cherish the time we have left together, instead of hoping for the impossible." Cortana sounded sad saying that, but before John could retort she corrected herself "Or maybe not impossible, but beyond highly unlikely."

"Cortana…" John felt something he hadn't felt since the fall of Reach: genuine sadness. During the Covenant war that had followed, he had started to just accept any losses and move on. Many SPARTANs died without him feeling anything, but simple regret. This however was different. For several years Cortana had never left his side and always been there for him, even after she had been lost in an infected High Charity.

"Having something to focus myself on… something new. It helps slowing down the progress of the rampancy." Cortana explained. "That's why I started to pay more attention to human emotions. Also we can't really change it at the moment, so like I said we should just try to make the best of our time here."

Thinking carefully about it, that explanation made a lot of sense. And even though John would've wished things were different, he had to agree with her that there was nothing they could do at the moment. So he decided to keep it in his mind, but mainly ignore it for now.

While leaving the building John thought about what to do with his spare time. He could go back to his room in Naruto's mansion, he could grab something to eat or he could just walk around the village to get to know the surroundings.

He decided on the latter and headed into the streets. Anywhere the Master Chief went though, he could feel all the strange looks he was getting. Nothing to be surprised about. Almost all of these people had never seen a SPARTAN before, so a walking tank in green armor that was a lot taller than everyone else, was easily spotted and eyed curiously.

After having roamed the streets for a while, John took a turn to the left and stood before a huge building that happened to be the village's hospital. He thought about entering to visit the people he had injured shortly after his arrival, but just as he was about to decide that a familiar face exited the hospital.

A familiar face and a familiar green jumpsuit to be exact. The Master Chief remembered that man, his name was Rock Lee and he also remembered how incredibly fast this guy had been during their fight. Then Lee noticed the SPARTAN.

"Oh hey it's you!" he greeted John with a smile. "Naruto told me what happened since our first 'encounter'."

"Are you feeling any better?" John asked the Shinobi. "I wanted to make sure I didn't cause any staying injuries." Lee's smile widened.

"Don't you worry; our medical Ninja's are extremely well trained. In fact I am fully recovered already. After all you didn't injure me as badly as the Anbu team." Lee explained. "Sakura is the only one that went back to work already, but only because all the other medics initially focused on her since she is the best medic we have. Sasuke is a different story. He may be tough, but you've broken almost half of all the bones in his body."

"I'm sorry about that; I'm guessing Sasuke was the leader of the Anbu team." John asked and Lee nodded. "But who exactly is that Sakura you were talking about?"

"What?" Lee looked dumbfounded for a second. "Oh right you didn't know her when you first met her. She is the medical Ninja with the pink hair."

"Oh, yes I remember who you mean." John replied in sudden clarity. Something like pink hair wasn't too common, even in this world as far as he could tell.

"Hey would you like to train with me?" Lee suddenly asked.

John gave it a little thought and came to the conclusion that he could still visit the others later, now that he knew where the hospital was. "Sure. Lead the way." John nodded to Lee, whose smile had now widened even further.

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Sometime earlier Naruto and Hinata had arrived at the hospital. Naruto had noticed Hinata smiling a bit since the moment he had returned to accompany her. Tsunade had asked where the sudden change in mind came from and being too embarrassed to tell the truth he instead said that he was going to visit Sasuke and Sakura in the hospital anyways, so going there with Hinata would not be any trouble.

As they were going down the hallway to have Sakura check out Hinata's injury, two very familiar bushy eye-brows attached to none other than Rock Lee came towards them.

"Hi Naruto. How was your mission?" He asked. Then he noticed Hinata's thigh, which was wrapped in some blood-soaked cloth. "Hinata what happened to you?"

"That's why we're here." Naruto answered. "She got hit by a projectile, but I'll tell you the whole story later. Are you feeling better?"

"Sure do!" Lee said giving a thumb up. "I'm heading for the training field. Care to join me later?"

"Of course. Our last sparring session was quite some time ago." Naruto grinned. The two men high-fived before continuing their way in opposite directions.

Naruto brought Hinata into Sakura's operating room, where they met both Sakura and her boyfriend Sasuke. The latter one sleeping in his bed, while the former was going through some documents.

"How is he doing Sakura?" Naruto asked his friend. Only then the medical Ninja looked up from her papers and noticed her two friends entering her room.

"Oh hi you two." She gave a warm smile. "He's slowly recovering. We all know he is as tough as they get, but his body had almost been broken in two. No worries though, I'm doing my very best to make him get well faster." Then she noticed Hinata's thigh. "I guess that's why you're here. Have a seat Hinata; I'll fix you up in no time."

The dark haired Kunoichi did as she was told and sat down on one of the comfortable office chairs in the room. Sakura knelt down and removed the cloth from her leg. Closely inspecting the injury, she noticed a small piece of metal that stuck in the other woman's leg. Releasing a seal on her belt Sakura suddenly held a long pair of tweezers in her hand, while initiating a numbing Jutsu in the other hand.

The metal was removed in a matter of seconds. It was the same kind of metal-piece that she had pulled out of her Anbu teammates limbs. She thought about the possibility of that green armored man having shot Hinata, but quickly dismissed it as something she would find out when reading the field report.

Sakura finished the treatment with a healing technique that sealed the wound and allowed for quick recovery.

"That's all I can do for you Hinata." The pink-haired woman said. "You should take it easy for the next couple of days and I'd like to have a talk with you…" She looked at Naruto from the corner of her eye, smirking. "… In private. Is there anything else you need Naruto?"

"Alright I get it." Naruto gave an exasperated sigh. "I'll be at the training grounds if you need me." And with that he left the room and headed towards his mentioned destination.

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With a grunt Lee finished his performance, by thrusting a kick into the dummy that caused it to burst into pieces. John was impressed. This man could've easily been a SPARTAN in his world and one of the strongest at that.

"May I see your form now?" Lee interrupted the Chief's thoughts. John nodded and got into the first basic stance he had learned from Chief Mendez. It was a simple boxing stance, which would also allow kicks, but mainly focused on solid strikes and a good defense.

The Master Chief took a small step forward and gave a straight punch to his training dummy. An Elite or another SPARTAN would have shrugged such a straight off, but for this wooden dummy a Spartan-straight was too much and it broke down upon impact.

"Wow…" Lee gasped. "You're freaky strong. Maybe you should show me without a dummy, they can't take your attacks." John agreed.

He imagined facing an opponent of equal size and showed his form. The SPARTAN started with a right uppercut to the jaw, closely followed by a left hook to the cheek and finally a right straight to the face. That was a simple, yet effective attack pattern, which all SPARTANs had learned during their training. But seeing as it was too simple compared to what Lee had shown him, John followed it up with a roundhouse kick, then an axe-handle and finally a kick to the head from above.

"Nice form." Someone whistled and it wasn't Lee. John looked back to see Naruto standing beside the black-haired Shinobi. "I came here for a sparring match with Lee, but if you're up for it I'd like to fight you as well."

The Master Chief straightened his posture and went towards them. "A sparring match?" He asked. "That means no weapons and special techniques?"

"Exactly." Naruto grinned. John couldn't help but think this was a bad idea, since there was little chance that Naruto was tough enough to shrug off a SPARTAN-punch and he told him so.

"Alright how about this, I'll have my sparring match with Lee first and then you decide whether it's a good idea for me to face you or not." Naruto proposed. "Is that okay with you?"

John nodded in agreement and gave the two Shinobi some room.

"This is gonna be interesting." Cortana said. John was surprised she would say something so suddenly after keeping quiet for so long. But she was definitely right: this was going to be interesting.

He took a comfortable posture about thirty meters away from the sparring partners and watched them backing off from each other and assuming their fighting stances. Three seconds passed with nothing happening. Then the two of them dashed towards each other at the same time.

Naruto tried a punch, but Lee easily blocked it and countered with a leg-sweeping kick, which in turn Naruto evaded by simply jumping over Lee and quickly turning around to block the fist that was headed for his jaw.

What at first had seemed like an even match to the Master Chief quickly turned out to be way in Lee's favor, as he was simply a lot faster than his opponent. And even though John notice several possibilities for Lee to land clean hits on Naruto, the man in the green jumpsuit refrained from using these opportunities. Not because he himself didn't notice them, but much more because he didn't need to. At least that was the vibe John was getting, by looking at the smirk on Lee's face.

A few minutes later Lee finally decided to exploit one of Naruto's openings and landed a kick right between the blond Ninja's shoulders. The latter flew a couple of meters before landing on his hands and gracefully flipping into a standing position.

"That was a good hit." Naruto smirked. "But why didn't you land one sooner? I know I couldn't keep up with your speed. At least without Kurama's help."

"Then how about you ask him for help?" Rock Lee showed a smirk of his own. "I never sparred against the two of you together, that might prove interesting."

"As you wish!" Naruto said and performed a turning motion with his hand over his belly. The moment the motion stopped Naruto erupted in a yellow light and had an incredibly powerful aura, that neither John nor Cortana could believe. Looking back at Lee John could see him dropping some weights he had been carrying around his wrists and ankles. The two got back into their fighting stances and then dashed towards one another once again. Only this time they were both a whole lot faster.

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**Not my best cliffhanger, but I'll leave it at that. Thanks a bunch again for reading and (hopefully) reviewing :D**


	8. Chapter 8: Nightmare in Konoha

**Hey, sorry for the unbelievably long pause. I came down with the worst case of writer's block imaginable and have been pretty busy anyways over the last couple of months. However I never forgot about this story and here it shall continue!**

* * *

Lee struck first, but Naruto easily countered the blow by shoving Lee's fist slightly upwards and went in for a punch of his own. Before it could land though, Lee had disappeared and reappeared behind him, immediately executing a roundhouse kick to the back. John was amazed. Without the adrenalin rush, that would activate "SPARTAN time", he actually had a hard time following their movements with his eyes. Similar to Lee before, Naruto now seemed to disappear, but looking at his motion tracker, John understood: The Shinobi simply moved too fast to see, even with his enhanced senses.

That knowledge was both impressive and frightening. Back in his own world John had never encountered or even heard of a living being that could move too fast for a SPARTAN to see. Thankfully the cameras of his suit were run by Cortana and she would provide him with an instant replay of every important hit. This lead to several windows being opened on John's visor at the same time, since the two Shinobi didn't show any signs of slowing down.

But that all changed with the last instant replay John got to see, two seconds after Lee crashed back-first into the ground. In the replay John could see Lee trying a double front-flip, followed by a heel kick from above. To his misfortune Naruto seemed to have anticipated this move and had dashed upwards towards Lee, his arm extended for a Lariat that would rival that of Chief Mendez.

The black-haired Ninja was caught completely off guard by Naruto's counterattack and thus couldn't react in time. The Lariat hit him with enough force to cut down a tree and sent him crashing into the ground where he was still lying beyond the visor. The blond Shinobi landed next to his friend and had a worried look on his face.

"Hey Lee! Are you alright?" He asked his friend, who had his eyes closed, seemingly unconscious. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hit you that hard." The golden glow around him stopped.

Naruto kneeled down to check Lee's pulse, but jumped back with a scream of surprise and pain, when the bushy-browed man suddenly spun around and kicked his adversary in the face.

"Hey no fair!" Naruto shouted. "I was trying to help you up!"

"You should know me better than this." Lee smirked. "You can't knock me out with a simple hit like that one."

This remark led John to wonder at his own strength. He had just witnessed an incredible display of power. Yet he was apparently supposed to believe that he was stronger than Naruto, since he had managed to knock Lee out back in the forest. For the first time in his life John was actually scared of his own strength. How easy would it have been to accidentally kill or at least severely hurt someone. A pat on the back, a sparring match… even just a high-five could leave the other person with a few broken bones, if nothing worse. So he made a decision concerning his deal with Naruto.

"I won't spar against you, I'm sorry." He said. Naruto and Lee both looked at him in confusion.

"Why not?" Naruto asked the SPARTAN

"Because I don't seem to have my strength under control." The soldier answered. "I almost killed your comrades back in the forest and accidentally destroyed a training dummy with my first punch. I don't want the same to happen to you."

Naruto's jaw dropped at the story with the dummy. He slowly looked over to Lee who only nodded with a stern expression.

"But I'm sure I can take that!" Naruto exclaimed, a frustrated frown on his face "Especially if Kurama helps me out…"

"Drop it Naruto." It was Lee who interrupted his friend "As much as I would love to see that match, heck as much as I would love to participate in such a match, you can't just go ahead and most likely sacrifice the training grounds for that. If you two went all out, one of you would certainly die and the scenery would be utterly destroyed."

Seeing that his black-haired friend had made a valid point, Naruto refrained from further challenges. It was getting late anyways so the three of them made their way back to the village to grab something to eat.

* * *

Since John didn't know his ways around in this strange town, he left it to Naruto to choose a place to eat. For anybody who had known the orange-clad Shinobi long enough it wouldn't be a surprise to see the group heading directly towards Ichiraku's Ramen-stall.

They were greeted by the old man himself with a warm smile. He tensed up a little upon seeing the SPARTAN enter after his favorite customer, but relaxed immediately after realizing how comfortable Lee and Naruto were with his presence.

Still the reaction didn't slip by John's attention, though he didn't think much of it. He was a pretty intimidating sight for these people after all.

The two Ninjas placed their orders without even looking at the menu. Not really surprising considering the fact that they probably knew it by heart, especially Naruto.

John on the other hand had to unravel the mysteries of the foreign signs on what he supposed to be the menu before him on his own. That is until Cortana stepped in, telling him that what he was trying to read was Japanese Kanji.

Having never learned Japanese, or any language beside English in his life, John gave a sigh, letting Cortana pop up a translation on his visor. Apparently Ramen was simply soup with noodles and some other more extravagant ingredients.

The Master Chief had his virtual friend scanned the menu and decided which meal would give the best nutrition and overall variety of healthy ingredients. Luckily all of the ingredients were also common back on Earth, thus Cortana didn't take more than three seconds to decide on a large bowl of Miso Ramen with extra beef and a special kind of star-shaped noodles.

It wasn't long until they were served their food, all at the same time.

Naruto and Lee clapped their hands together and gave a quick "Itadakimasu!", before starting to devour the huge amounts of food in front of them.

It was only then that John realized that his helmet would be in the way. Instead of completely taking it off though, he settled on shoving it up far enough to be able to eat, without showing much of his face though. When he grabbed the chopsticks and thus his first bite, he could have sworn to hear his companions give disappointed sighs and see them quickly return their gazes to the task at hand.

He was surprised when he tasted the noodles. They were absolutely delicious. It had been an enormously long time since the Chief's last proper meal, but even to a renowned Chef, John was sure of that, this exact meal would taste like one cooked for gods.

Only now the SPARTAN realized how hungry he had been and quickly devoured his bowl of Ramen with beef. Having been paid quite well (apparently) for his first mission he went ahead and ordered a second bowl, which he proceeded to eat a little slower, not because he wasn't hungry anymore, but rather to be able to savor every last bit of taste that he could.

John ended up eating three large bowls of Ramen, still being outmatched by the thirteen that Naruto managed to munch down though. It seriously left the Master Chief and his A.I. to wonder where all that food was going. Surely there was no stomach big enough to manage that much, was there?

In any case John gave his thanks and big compliment to Ichiraku for his food and gave a little tip to the actual price, which was gratefully accepted by the young woman working in the stall next to the old man.

* * *

It was already dark when they left, so the three of them decided to head home. Since Lee lived in the opposite direction he gave his goodbyes and the two remaining warriors soon were on their way to what once had been the Uchiha district.

An awkward silence spread between the two, so John decided to say something.

"Sorry that I had to decline your challenge." He said.

"Huh?" Naruto replied, then realizing what the green-armored soldier had said "Oh no worries. I guess Lee was right anyway. And you can't imagine the beating Sakura and granny Tsunade would have in store for me if I happened to die during a sparring match." He gave an awkward grin.

Already having killed opponents during a sparring match by accident, John could not laugh or even chuckle about that remark. Instead he was reminded of that time when ha had been fourteen years old and had been forced into a sparring match with five ODSTs. It hadn't been his choice back then, but still he had killed allied soldiers in what was supposed to be training.

Back then it was legitimate self-defense, but in this case he had the choice to decline the challenge, so in order to prevent history from repeating itself John had made up his mind: He would only fight against actual enemies and that was final.

When they reached Naruto's house they split up as soon as they entered, Naruto claiming he was heading straight to bed. John went to his room and contemplated heading out for the night once again.

"No way!" Cortana interrupted his thoughts "Your body clearly demands rest. That little bit of rest you had during the mission can hardly be called sleep!"

"But I don't feel that tired." John replied truthfully. He didn't see a point in lying down if his body gave no signals of such necessity.

"That's because your body has grown used to the constant strain you're putting it under. Seriously, take it easy and just rest for the night. You deserved it." Cortana said in a warm tone.

Knowing better than trying to argue with a near-rampant A.I. the SPARTAN decided on humoring her and finally took off his armor for the very first time in several years. And this time he wasn't interrupted.

He carefully lay down on the huge bed and could immediately feel a wave of drowsiness wash over him. Cortana seemed to have been right after all. Soon he could feel himself drifting into a deep slumber.

* * *

An Explosion. Then a second one. The Master Chief shot right up, only to find himself on board of a UNSC ship. Many Marines were running past him, guns at the ready for whatever awaited behind the huge steel doors of the Pillar of Autumn.

Suddenly the doors blasted open with another explosion and a dozen Elites stormed the room each taking on a couple of Marines at once. Instinctively John reached for his weapon, only to find himself completely unarmed. The Elites were already finished killing off the Marines and now were turning their attention towards him.

He readied himself to take all of them on with his fists if it had to be. But instead of charging at him the Elites withdrew forming a path from the blasted steel doors towards him. Looking down the corridor he only saw darkness.

Then suddenly a spark lit up the shadows. A spark in form of an Energy Sword that is. An exceptionally tall Elite stepped forward from the corridor sword in hand. He grabbed another energy sword from his side and threw it over to the Master Chief.

"Defend yourself, Demon!" the Elite roared. Now that the Chief had a better view on this foe, he was shocked to realize that he knew his adversary. It was none other than the Arbiter himself who was challenging him.

Being left with no choice and not being a man of many words John activated the energy sword his former friend had given him and with a strange pain inside his chest he charged at the Sangheili.

The blades clashed, sparks flying everywhere. John withdrew, only to attack again from a slightly different angle, but the Elite parried with little effort. Now it was the Arbiter's turn to attack. He swung his sword with a precision, John could not even comprehend.

Suddenly John felt a burning pain in his chest. Looking down he saw that his adversary had bypassed his defenses and pierced his body with their blade. Everything went blurry around the SPARTAN as he fell down on his knees, only to topple over and fall forward on his face.

This was it. The Master Chief knew that these were his final thoughts in life, as he felt his consciousness slowly drifting away.

"Joooohhn!" Cortana screamed, but he was too weak to respond. The cold hands of death grabbed him and slowly tore him out of this world.

* * *

"John!" Cortana shouted, clearly audible this time. John shot up and found himself in a huge bedroom.

* * *

**And that's as far as I'm going today. I really hope I'll have the time to concentrate on writing in the next weeks, I seriously don't want such a long break to happen again. Anyways, thanks for reading and please consider leaving a review :)**


	9. Chapter 9: The Battle for Konoha

**Hello friends, I do have to apologize. This Chapter was finished a few days ago, but I've been having severe Internet connection problems, that will hopefully soon be fixed. But the good news is, that in order to make up for lost time, this Chapter is probably my longest one so far (or at least in the top 2 ^^'). Also this is where shit finally hits the fan, so I hope you'll enjoy reading. Again thank you for your patience with me :)**

* * *

John immediately regained control of his breathing. Looking to his left he saw the holographic projection of a very concerned looking Cortana ascending from his helmet.

"What happened?" she asked "You look like you've seen a ghost."

"Something like that." John murmured, not paying mind to the exceptionally well-functioning microphones of his suit, thus the fact that Cortana understood everything he just exhaled.

"What's that supposed to mean?" the translucent woman asked the SPARTAN with a worried expression on her face. "You know you can talk to me about anything."

The Master Chief appreciated the way his friend responded. It almost let him forget the condition Cortana was in. Almost… But that thought in itself brought reality back to him with a vengeance.

"Just a bad dream Cortana. Nothing to worry about." He said in his usual calm and deep voice, hoping to ease his friend's mind. Then he remembered what Cortana had said about finding new challenges and observations to ease her mind. Maybe telling her the contents of his dream could do the same trick. Maybe she could even help him comprehend the dream in return.

Thinking this was the best course of action, John told the A.I. everything about his dream, from the slaughter of the marines on the 'Pillar of Autumn' up to his own death at the hands of the Arbiter, the only Sangheili John would've ever considered calling 'a friend'.

"I see." Cortana said after John concluded his narration. She appeared to be deep in thought for a moment before continuing: "I'll think about your dream. As of now I don't know what to make of it, but I promise that I will tell you what it means, the moment I find out." She gave a small smile.

That alone was enough to ease John's own tension, which he only now realized to have been under. Seeing as it was still dark outside, the SPARTAN lay back down and tried to relax. A difficult task for someone is his position, especially after such a vivid nightmare.

He didn't even realize when the sun had risen. Apparently his brain had skipped any further dream-phases for the night as some kind of sub-conscious protection. John appreciated the way his brain worked, especially since that fact left him in an unusually refreshed state. When he got up he only felt a slight strain from the previous days, but all in all he felt amazing. His strength at its maximum and his stamina completely refilled over that good night of sleep.

The first order of business was a shower. He hadn't had one of those in so many years… It was long overdue. Having the hot water run down his scarred and steeled body felt great, like it was washing all the pain, blood and guilt away that had clung to him like tar.

After finally getting clean the SPARTAN left the shower and reequipped his armor, since he literally had nothing else to wear and he had gotten so accustomed to wearing it, that he couldn't even imagine wearing 'normal clothes'. The act of getting the armor onto his body proved quite more difficult than removing it. Not only were the plates extraordinarily heavy, but some of them were supposed to be in spots that John simply couldn't reach well enough, like his back.

Everything else went just about fine. Just that damn back plate was impossible to get right for him on his own. Luckily there was a knock on the door at that moment.

"Hey it's me, Naruto! May I come in?" the house owner asked very politely.

"Sure!" John answered and as the blond Ninja entered he continued: "Would you mind helping me with this?" he held the plate close to the spot where it was supposed to go "I can't get in place on my own."

Naruto gladly offered his help, but nearly dropped the plate, having completely underestimated its weight. "Holy crap! And you're USED to wearing this?" the Shinobi's eyes were wide with disbelief.

Nonetheless, with some directions from Cortana they managed to get the last piece of the Mark VI armor in place, having John look like… Well the same way everyone in Konoha and most members of the UNSC got to know him so far: A huge walking tank in green armor. For anyone seeing it for the first time, truly a sight to behold.

But before John could say his thanks to Naruto he swung around and pointed his Pistol at the balcony. His motion tracker had not let him down. Out there was a Shinobi wearing a strange animal-like mask and a Katana on his back.

"Don't!" Naruto shouted and rushed in front of the Master Chief. "This is one of our villages ANBU. Our special operations forces."

John lowered his gun, but stayed tense. His past experiences with Secret Services and their Spec Ops had taught him to never trust any of them. Naruto opened the window and the masked person began to speak.

"Greetings, Mr. Uzumaki. I'm here to tell you and your guest to immediately report to the Hokage's office." And with that he disappeared in a cloud of smoke.

"Well guess we better get going." Naruto groaned. "I was going to offer you breakfast, but it looks like that'll have to wait." John simply nodded and they went on their way to the Hokage's office as fast as they could. Naruto leaping over the roof tops, John running down the streets.

Even though John could've probably gone over the roof tops as well he had decided against it, fearing to break through a roof upon landing. Either way he was running at a pace which even Naruto had trouble keeping up with and so they arrived nearly at the same time, Naruto being just a little bit faster thanks to his 'shortcut'.

There had already been quite a bit going on in the streets, but at the Hokage's office building it seemed that everybody was in a rush. John had a very bad feeling about this. It reminded him too much of Covenant attacks, just before they actually happened. The two of them swiftly climbed the stairs to Tsunade's office, where they were greeted by a number of familiar faces and some – at least to John - not so familiar ones as well.

* * *

Naruto's anxiety only grew when he saw all of his friends, some Genin and even a bunch of Anbu operatives all gathered around the Hokage's desk. The only one missing was Sasuke, for obvious reasons.

"Finally." The old Lady sighed "Now that you're here, we can finally begin the defense force meeting."

"Defense force?" Naruto asked surprised "Why? Ae we being attacked?" Almost everyone in the room seemed just as surprised as he was. Only John and the Anbu didn't lose their composure. They had probably either known already or had simply guessed what was happening.

"Yes, defense force." The fifth Hokage answered "We lost communications with a scout outpost only a few kilometers from Konoha. Whatever it is, that's coming for us, it's coming from the village you evacuated. I shall now assign the teams and their objectives."

* * *

John had suspected as much. Since the Covenant apparently were also here and were commanding war-robots of some sort, it had only been a matter of time until they had to strike.

"The first team will consist of Captain Yamato, Shikamaru Nara, Choji Akimichi, Ino Yamanaka and Neji Hyuga." The mentioned Shinobi took a scroll that was handed to their Captain and took off towards their destination. "The second team will consist of Kakashi Hatake, Naruto Uzumaki, Sakura Haruno, Sai and Hinata Hyuga."

A tall, masked man with grey hair stepped forward and took the scroll that was handed to him. The Master Chief saw Naruto give him a short salute, before the team left the office.

"Team number three will consist of Might Gai, Rock Lee, Ten Ten, Shino Aburame and the Master Chief." Almost everyone looked at her in confusion, until the SPARTAN stepped forward and saluted.

The man, who John presumed was Might Gai took the scroll, that was offered to him and the five of them took off, Gai leading the way. They swiftly made their way through the main street of the Hidden Leaf village.

John saw several people, even families amongst them run in the opposite direction to seek shelter from the incoming attack. Looking up the Chief noticed that clouds were starting to hide the sun and it very well looked like it was about to start raining.

Once they reached the main gate of the village, sure enough the downpour began.

They stood atop the closed gate for what felt like an eternity, but looking at his visor, John knew that it had only been two minutes. You could practically grab the tension in the air. Gai turned towards the Chief with a stern look on his face.

"Look I know we don't know each other and you probably have at least as much battlefield experience as me." The black haired Jounin said "Even though we just met I have great respect for you, just based on the things I heard about you. You seem to have a better understanding of what we're up against. So please tell me: How worried should I be about my team and the village?"

John took a deep breath, readying himself to answer in all honesty. "Where I come from, these aliens…" He stopped there and pushed Gai out of the way. Just in time as it appeared. The very Moment that Gai stepped backwards, a missile flew right through the spot that he had been on just a second ago and hit a building a little further down the road. It detonated, turning a good bit of the wall into rubble.

They all immediately looked towards the forest that surrounded Konoha and what they saw shocked them all, even the Master Chief. From between the trees an army of robots, directed by several Elites and joined by grunt Squads, Jackals and even Hunter duos emerged, looking all too ready to flatten the entire town.

One of the Elites, that seemed to be in a leading position scanned the walls of the village. When his gaze met John's they both froze. The Sangheili's eyes lit up in rage.

"_DEMON!_" He shouted "_You shall be extinguished, along with the rest of these worthless humans!_"

Just as the alien finished John could see several fireballs from all sides be fired towards the enemies and the girl named Ten Ten opened up one of her scrolls, making hundreds of bladed weapons appear and rain down on the attackers.

The rain of blades was met with a barrage of machine-gun fire, so that the few ones that hit the Elite, simply bounced off his energy shields.

"_ATTACK!_" the Sangheili shouted and a storm of missiles, bullets and grenades was unleashed upon the walls of the Hidden Leaf village.

It should not come as a surprise that the immense firepower was far superior to what the walls could withstand and soon there were several breaches with enemies flooding into the streets of Konoha.

"Everyone split up and stop their advances into the village!" Gai shouted. The others nodded and jumped down into the village to take on their adversaries. John grabbed his Assault rifle and followed them, landing on the back of a huge robot, one that looked exactly like the one he had to use the Spartan Laser on, in order to destroy it.

The Robot immediately started trying to shake off the Chief, but John had already grabbed his combat knife and rammed it into the metal chassis, to prevent being thrown off.

"_SHOW YOURSELF! TERMINATE YOUR ORDERS, HUMAN!_" the metallic voice of the robotic titan rang in John's head. The SPARTAN knew that shooting this thing was a waste of ammunition, so he looked for a fragile looking spot, which he could exploit.

And sure enough he found something. On the back of the Titan, slightly above John's pelvis, there was a red glowing light in a dent. The Master Chief took his chances and punched the light as hard as he possibly could.

To his surprise, he felt almost no resistance at all and felt his fist cleanly go through the metal chassis, tearing apart electric circuits and whatever else was in his way. The Titan collapsed, falling forwards and seemingly put out of order for good.

John retracted his arm, which was buried in the colossal robot up to his shoulder, and jumped off the metallic structure.

Turning around the SPARTAN grabbed the Elite's arm, that was about to cut him in two with an energy sword and landed a punch straight in the alien's face. The Elite staggered backwards, but shrugged off the punch and corrected his stance.

John cursed himself for not bringing his shotgun with him, but luckily he had a Plan B. With a hiss he plasma blade in his hand activated and he readied himself for what was no doubt going to be an extremely difficult and dangerous fight.

* * *

Naruto couldn't believe his eyes. He remembered exactly how difficult just two of these robots had been to beat and now there was an entire army of them, tearing apart buildings of the village he loved so much. Evading a staff-slash of one of the robots he placed a Rasengan in its back and blew it up.

Looking to his right he could see Sakura struggle with one of the big metal fiends. Little projectiles were flying everywhere, but luckily none of them hit any of the defending Shinobi. Sakura evaded a larger projectile and dashed forward. Her fist started glowing and before he knew it, Naruto already saw the big robot crumble to the ground with a huge hole in its chest.

Once again the blond shinobi was reminded why it was better not to mess with his friend.

Suddenly he could hear the cry of a child a bit further down the street, where some of the 'aliens' as John had called them, were trying to enter a small restaurant. With a turning motion over his stomach Naruto released Kurama's seal and could instantly feel the enormous power of the Biju spirit flow through him.

Running towards the enemies he began molding chakra in his right palm, creating a huge Rasengan. One of the aliens suddenly turned around and fired a glowing projectile at Naruto and the blond Ninja was too close to evade this time, so he tried to block it with a Kunai. However as he soon realized, the glowing projectile wasn't just Chakra or anything comparable to it.

It burned straight through the Kunai and hit Naruto in his upper left arm, causing a burning wave of pain to run rampant in his body. The Rasengan hit and obliterated the aliens, who had all been too slow to realize what had been about to happen. Naruto listened carefully. There it was again, it was definitely the sobbing of a child, coming from within the building. He gave Kakashi a quick sign where he was going and then ran into the building.

It was dark inside, but Kurama's chakra was glowing brightly enough to see. Looking at his arm Naruto only now realized that the glowing projectile had penetrated the layer of chakra surrounding his body and burnt right into his flesh. That explained why it hurt so much and the blond Ninja's worries increased immensely, seeing what these enemies were capable of.

He ran down a corridor and opened the door and sure enough there was a young girl, maybe four years old, sobbing in the corner of the room. Her expression brightened a bit when she saw the hero of the village arrive. Naruto took her small hand and lifted her up on his arms. He knew, he had to take this girl to safety, before anything else could be done.

The two of them, or rather Naruto carrying the girl they left the building and headed down the main street of Konoha towards the Hokage's tower. Before they could reach it though, Naruto sensed danger from the left, but it was too late.

He was kicked in the head, by a non-human foot with enough force to send him tumbling to the right. Naruto tried to keep the little girl out of harm's way, the best he could. He stood upright, put the girl down on the ground and looked her straight in the eyes.

"I want you to run and hide, so that no one can find you, okay?" Naruto told the child "Once I've gotten rid of these guys, I'll meet up with you again and then we're getting you to safety, but for now you have to hide, do you understand?"

The girl looked at him with tears in her eyes, but she nodded. Naruto turned around to face his opponent. As it turned out the one that kicked him in the face was one of the taller aliens, the ones that John had called 'Elites'. The Elite performed a small motion with its hand and a blade of pure energy formed from the hilt in the alien's hand.

"_The demon won't stop us this time._" The Elite spoke "_And neither will you other filthy humans."_

With that the Elite charged at Naruto, thrusting forward the blade, which Naruto dodged and tried landing a kick to the monster's side. What he hadn't taken into account was that these creatures were also from John's universe and they too were extremely quick in their reflexes. In other words: the kick was blocked without a second thought.

"Aaaaahhh! Help!" a voice came from behind Naruto. Turning around, the orange-clad Shinobi saw something that let his eyes widen in terror.

Another one of the Elites had found the girl he was trying to protect and was closing in on her with one of these glowing blades in its hand.

"Nooooo! Leave her alone!" Naruto screamed, but he already had to dodge another swipe of his own opponent's blade.

"_I'm your opponent!_" the Elite roared and for a moment Naruto could have sworn, that the alien had grinned, even with such a strange mouth. He didn't know what else to do so he planted one hand on the Elites stomach and shot a Biju-dama into it, which sent the Elite flying backwards into a brick wall, leaving it either knocked out or dead. Either way it didn't move anymore.

Naruto immediately ran towards the Elite that by now was towering over the girl and he knew that he wouldn't make it in time. All he could do was watch in horror as the blade came down and…

…well something happened that neither Naruto, nor the alien had expected. Out of an alleyway came a blue blur of speed and hit the Elite. When it did, Naruto recognized a tall armored warrior in blue and gold armor punching the Elite in the face so hard, its shields instantly imploded and it flew straight into the wall across the street, spilling violet blood everywhere.

The newcomer picked up the now panicking girl and brought her over to Naruto, who was still in shock by this person's appearance. His armor looked a little bit like John's, but the armor pieces had different shapes and colors and this warrior was a bit shorter that the 'green demon'.

The stranger put the girl down, only to have her hide behind Naruto as soon as her feet touched the ground.

"Are you alright?" the stranger asked in a raspy voice.

* * *

The Master Chief was impressed. He knew what these Shinobi could do, but still they were putting up a way better fight than he'd have thought. Shino's bugs disabled the wiring of some of the larger robots, slowing their advance. All the while Ten Ten proved that even simple weapons like hers, could be the end to an Elite warrior. Lee and Gai went even further and obliterated waves of enemies using nothing more than their hands and feet.

But as impressive as that was in its own right, John knew they were only managing so well because their enemies weren't well organized. Should they have to face off with a team of Zealots, things could get really dangerous.

And he might have just jinxed it there. A group of Elite warriors was running towards them, carrying heavy weapons such as fuel rods and mounted cannons. Only that the cannons were not mounted right now. Instead they were pointing directly at John's group.

"Get down!" he shouted out towards his teammates, but the Elites were too quick on the draw for that and a flurry of plasma blasts was unleashed upon them.

With huge effort John pulled out his bubble shield projector, jumped in front of his team and activated the shield all in less than one second. Ten Ten and Lee looked at him in awe, while Gai gave him a thumb up and a brightly sparkling grin.

The Elites noticed that they were wasting their ammunition and thus switched their weapons for their Energy swords. Now they were running directly towards them and John only had a few seconds to say something to the others.

"Whatever you do, do NOT let the blades touch you!" he shouted, just as the Elites entered the shield. The team instantly scattered and each of them took on exactly one alien. Except for John who had to deal with 3 of them at once.

A plasma grenade in one hand, the energy sword in the other, John dashed towards the closest one of his opponents and placed the grenade on its stomach. The alien was caught completely off guard, which enabled John to follow up the maneuver with a roundhouse kick to the Elite's head to send it flying backwards. When it hit the wall behind it, the grenade detonated, leaving almost nothing but a gory pool of blood.

He turned around to block the incoming sword with his own and only barely managed to do so. According to his radar the other remaining foe was coming up behind him, so John ducked and rolled out of harm's way in the last second. However the blade still managed to scrape his energy shields, almost completely depleting them all at once.

This was looking bad. He had two well trained swordsmen as opponents and didn't have his most effective weapons with him. The probability of him surviving this fight, if he didn't get any reinforcements soon was close to zero.

"Don't give up hope!" Cortana said in John's mind "Miracles can happen at any moment. And knowing your luck you will come out on top one way or the other!" There was a lot of determination in her voice and that rekindled John's will to fight. He couldn't lose now. He still had a job to do. He had to bring Cortana back to the UNSC and have them heal her. It was strange, but for some reason the word 'heal' seemed more appropriate to the SPARTAN than 'repair'.

With his new found power he dashed forward, blocking the first blade that came from the left. He quickly turned on the spot and performed a sweeping motion. He could hear, see and smell the energy sword cutting through the Elite's stomach. He had done it. Another one down. His teammates were still struggling with their opponents, so that was another job that was still waiting for him.

A quick look on his motion tracker sufficed to see that the last Elite was running up behind John. The Chief turned around and caught the arm that was leading the blade down on him in his left hand and prepared to strike on his own. But then something happened, that he hadn't accounted for. The Elite also managed to catch his arm and squeezed it tightly.

That on its own wouldn't have been too bad, but one of the alien's armored fingers found its way into the cut in John's armor. The one that he still had from his battle with the black haired Shinobi Sasuke Uchiha. The finger scraped heavily against his skin and tore a bloody wound into John's forearm.

In shock over the sudden pain, John couldn't react in time as the Elite planted a powerful push-kick into his stomach, having John drop his sword and tumbling backwards against a piece of rock that had once probably been part of a building.

His opponent stepped closer, sword raised to finish the deal and John couldn't do anything to prevent it. He even fired a whole magazine of his Magnum in the alien's direction, but the few shot's that hit the target merely scraped the Elite's energy shields.

"So this is how it all ends, huh?" John thought to himself, very disappointed in his performance after Cortana's 'pep-talk'. He closed his eyes and waited for the inevitable end to come.

But it never came. Instead he could hear a loud thump and a short squeal, then there was silence. Well except for all the fighting that was happening in the streets, but you get the picture.

John slowly opened his eyes, ready for any possible sight that might greet him. Or so he thought. What he saw was a gory mess of an alien, which had been impaled on a glowing 3 meter- long bolt of some sorts. Then he heard a familiar voice speak from a rooftop behind him.

"You look like you could need some help." the raven haired Shinobi with the weird pattern in his eyes said. Sasuke Uchiha was standing up there, looking all too ready for a good fight.

* * *

**And with that I'll leave you for now. I hope you liked it :)**

**Some of the events in this chapter have been inspired by reviews and messages that you guys sent me, so thanks a bunch fo that^^**

**Until next time, whenever that might be ^^'**

**As always thank you so much for reading and please consider leaving a review ;)**


	10. Chapter 10: A fateful encounter

**Hey welcome back to another Chapter. I wrote this during the many breaks I get at my new job, so if that keeps up I may be able to update more frequently in the future :) Also I finally planned out all the major plot points for the story and I know exactly where I want to go with this. I hope my ideas will please most fans of both the Halo series and the Naruto franchise. This is going to be the longest Chapter so far and a lot is happening in it, so I sure hope you'll enjoy reading and of course reviewing ;)**

**Oh and this is now replacing the text I had uploaded to explain why the Chief can compete with the Ninja's in my story. For all of you who didn't ave a chance to read that: Read the Halo books and think logically about a battle of tactics and weaponry. John is far more amazing than most give him credit for.  
**

**Anyways, on with the show:**

* * *

Naruto was dumbfounded. Completely surprised by this person's appearance he couldn't even say a word in response while looking over the armor before him once more. This new warrior was a bit shorter than John, but seemed to be about just as strong. They wore a similar armor to John's as well, but the colors and features were quite different. Their helmet had a much smaller faceplate, comparable to the eye-slit in a shinobi-mask, with a strange sort of black fabric covering the mouth and nose of the warrior. In opposition to that their shoulder pads were enormous compared to the Chief's. One was a somewhat slick design that would help block incoming projectiles, while the other was a huge metal plate with a crooked knife attached to it. Strapped onto the warrior's chest were a lot of cylindrical objects, which Naruto didn't know what to make of.

On top of all that, the armor was mostly colored in a cerulean blue, while having some parts on the limbs colored golden, though it was a rather dull shade of gold. The warrior shifted their weight uncomfortably before speaking again.

"Hey, is everything alright?" the warrior asked in that same raspy voice. There was no mistaking this person was male as well. Finally Naruto found his words again.

"Um... thank you for your help, but who are you?" he asked. It wasn't the most polite way to ask for a name, but Naruto was still too perplexed to care about that.

"I'm not sure if I can tell you that. What I can tell you however is that I'm a friend." The stranger said after a short pause. This was one of the things Naruto hated more than anything: unnecessary secrecy. What could possibly be dangerous about telling somebody your name? He felt an urge to say something rather impolite, but kept his cool.

"Come on, just tell me your name. If you're an ally I need to know what to call you…" at that moment the stranger raised the small weapon that had been at his side up until now and pointed it in Naruto's direction. The small girl started sobbing again, still hiding behind Naruto's leg.

Before Naruto could even comprehend the situation, let alone react, the stranger fired his weapon and Naruto sensed a projectile flying past him at an unbelievable speed. Only then did he hear a pained scream behind him and turned around to see one of the bird-like aliens fall dead on its face, dropping a weapon that had been aimed at him and the little girl.

"You can call me Six." The stranger said when Naruto turned to face him again. "I have noticed the presence of another SPARTAN in this village. Could you tell me where he or she is?"

"You mean J… I mean the Master Chief?" Naruto asked. He decided to be careful not to spill John's name to a person he practically knew nothing about.

"That rank certainly sounds like UNSC personnel." The stranger answered, perking his head up in surprise.

"He's probably somewhere close to the main gate." Naruto said, pointing down the road. "Basically just that way."

"Thanks." Six answered before sprinting down the street with superhuman speed.

Naruto looked after the strange figure for a while, before feeling a slight tug on his pants. The small girl looked up at him expectantly.

"Don't worry." He said to her. "We'll get you to the safe zone right now." And with that he picked the girl up and ran towards the Hokage's office building.

* * *

The Uchiha's arrival had turned the tides of the battle by a lot. John was astounded at the pure destructive capabilities the raven-haired Shinobi unleashed upon the invading robots. His large exoskeleton – apparently it was called "Susano'o" – was the closest thing to a tank that the Chief had seen ever since he had arrived in this world.

He shot a few rounds into a close-by Grunt-squad, before burying his knife in their Elite-leader's neck, instantly killing the large alien. The Master Chief had long lost sight of his supposed team mates, but since he had seen what they were capable of, he had little worries about them.

Looking around he noticed that not a single alien was left alive at the plaza, that he and Sasuke had just wiped clean. His motion tracker suddenly flared red, indicating an enemy contact a bit away from him. When he tried to make out where the enemy was exactly he spotted them right behind Sasuke.

It was a stealthed Elite warrior raising his energy sword to kill the unsuspecting Ninja.

"Look out!" the Chief managed to shout "Behind you!" From the looks of it that was all the warning the Shinobi needed.

Sasuke swirled around, drew his Katana and struck against the blade coming down at him. John knew this was a terrible idea. The plasma blades were able to cut through almost anything and surely a regular steel Katana would be no exception.

But when the swords clashed it seemed like a lightning struck into the two opposing warriors as the black-haired Ninja's blade suddenly emitted incredible amounts of electric energy. The electrified Katana easily blocked the deadly plasma and its wielder parried the Elite's slash with little to no effort.

The next thing John knew was the Elite being sliced right into two, but since he had blinked at that exact moment, the SPARTAN had not been able to see the action being performed. Looking at the dead Elite's armor – and identifying it as the one of a Zealot – he felt great respect towards the Uchiha's skills.

"Hard to believe, that I was able to defeat him back in the forest." John muttered to himself more than anyone else, but still it was Cortana who answered.

"He probably didn't fight at full power back then. And he didn't know a thing about you or your weapons. Since that was also the case for you, it all came down to combat experience and you easily have more of that than most people we met on this planet so far." The A.I. said "You've probably been in combat longer than this Ninja has been alive."

The harsh truth behind the words hit him instantly, but he didn't react in any noticeable way. Sasuke's voice tore his mind back to reality

"Hey I've just been ordered to a different sector by the Hokage. Can you manage this plaza on your own?"

John sarcastically looked at all the alien corpses and the scrapped robots around them before answering "Yeah I think I'll live."

With a grin Sasuke took off, leaving the Master Chief on his own. John decided to head back towards the main gate, to help his team fend off the invaders. While walking he took in how the scene had changed in just a few hours. The shops were empty, most houses heavily damaged and not a single civilian in sight. There were a few alien corpses here and there, but the most obvious change were the noises coming from the battle that was happening basically everywhere around him.

He turned around a corner, going back onto the main street when he saw Gai performing a 'Dynamic Entry' on an Elite, who was literally blown away by the force of the kick. It flew backwards into a wall, leaving a noticeable dent within it, before falling down on the ground, seemingly dead. The leader of John's team landed facing towards him and flashed a grin, while giving the SPARTAN a thumbs-up.

"I see you managed to get rid of the enemies on the plaza. Where did Sasuke go?" He asked the Chief.

"He said he was ordered to go somewhere else. Looks like you finished your fight as well." He answered. This earned him another pose from the black haired Shinobi.

"Sure I did, what did you expect?" Gai grinned. Then suddenly he tensed up, his facial features turning from a grin to a look of utmost uncertainty, as he looked slightly past the SPARTAN.

The Master Chief looked at his visor and noticed a friendly contact closing in behind him. That was strange. The contacts should have been either hostile or unknown, yet here the motion tracker called the approaching person an ally.

"Chief!" Cortana exclaimed excitedly "The contact! They're UNSC!"

John couldn't believe what he had just heard. Was Cortana's rampancy that advanced already? But then again his Mjolnir armor gave a similar reading, as a UNSC-tag would explain the contact being viewed as 'allied'. He decided that it was best to just confirm this with his own eyes, so he turned around.

Out from a cloud of dust and smoke that was covering the main street of the Hidden Leaf village a person stepped forth, revealing more of their form with every step they took. John couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe his own eyes. The contact was UNSC alright. But not only that, it was a SPARTAN.

That was probably the last thing he would have expected to ever see on this planet. The SPARTAN stepped forward, revealing their blue and gold armor that had a lot of modifications to it. John immediately knew that this person was a SPARTAN III, only they would ever modify their armor in such ways. The armor looked old, like in several years old. Some of the colors had started fading and the armor had a lot of scratches and small dents, but still the Master Chief could recognize the symbol that declared the rank of a lieutenant on the other SPARTAN's chest.

Seeing an officer of higher rank than his own, John immediately relapsed into his long life as a UNSC soldier and saluted properly. The lieutenant seemed taken aback by this as he approached the Chief.

"No need for salutes Master Chief. I'm glad to finally see some UNSC personnel, but still: Would you mind telling me how you got here? And possibly how we can get off this planet?" the blue soldier asked.

"I'm glad to see you too, Sir. But sadly I do neither know how I got here nor a way out." John answered truthfully "But with all due respect, Sir: these people are under attack by the Covenant, as I'm sure you've noticed, and need our help."

"Yeah you're right about that Chief." The lieutenant looked past John now and addressed Might Gai "Is there anything I can help you with? Or do you know where I could be of help?"

Gai still had a look of uncertainty on his face until the Master Chief gave him an affirmative nod, easing the Shinobi's mind and having him relax his muscles.

"This sector is clear." Gai answered "Maybe a bit down south they could use your help." He pointed to his left.

"Thanks. I'll take the Chief with me if you don't mind." The soldier added.

Gai seemed to ponder this for a second, before replying: "He's all yours."

"Alright, follow me Master Chief." The lieutenant said and the Chief obliged as they headed down a side-alley towards the direction that Gai had pointed.

* * *

Sasuke cursed himself for getting into this situation. He had to take cover from the barrage of projectiles that were constantly heading his way.

"Come back to the Hospital this instant!" was what Sakura had ordered him via radio. It had only been a matter of time anyways. His wounds had mostly healed, but two of his fractured ribs were still… well fractured and his chakra reserves were comparably low. He had left the hospital and joined the fight on his own accord, without any medical personnel's permission.

But now he was in trouble. On his way back he had bumped into a large squadron of robots and aliens that had immediately opened fire upon him. Due to his low chakra reserves his Susano'o had begun to fade and he was forced to take actual cover from his enemies; that was a first in recent years.

The storm of projectiles suddenly stopped, so Sasuke decided to take a quick look at the battlefield. Just as he was about to look up from behind his rock, that same rock exploded, throwing the Ninja on his back and opening his view on his enemies. Or rather: his single enemy right now.

The aliens and most of the robots had left, apparently not seeing him as much of a threat, so now only the largest of the robots was left and was closing in on him. Sasuke felt a surge of rage at the aliens for apparently thinking he wasn't worth their time, but at the same time he knew that they were probably right, given his current condition.

"_TERMINATE YOUR ORDERS, NINJA!" _the mechanic giant shouted in a deep metallic voice. Its tubes-for-hands started spinning and the Uchiha knew this was going to be his undoing. He was on the ground and couldn't get up fast enough and his chakra level didn't suffice for any defensive techniques.

"So this is how it all ends? I can't believe I'm dying before that obnoxious Naruto…" he muttered smiling, having his actual last thoughts be about his beloved Sakura, who he would never see again…

"How dare you attack my boyfriend?!"

Sasuke thought he imagined that scream. He knew he hadn't however when somebody jumped down from a building and punched the robot with enough force to obliterate it. Pieces of metal were flying everywhere, only slightly passing the raven-haired Shinobi. His eyes finally managed to focus on the person emerging from the rubble and heading towards him.

He instantly recognized the pink hair, the green eyes, the beautiful facial features and the very worried expression. Never before had he been so happy to see anyone. His girlfriend ran to his side and checked his condition.

"Sasuke, you idiot!" Sakura screamed "If you died here I would kill you! Do you have ANY idea how worried I was?"

Sasuke slowed his breathing and muttered something incomprehensible, looking at Sakura, while also raising his right hand.

"Don't speak too much!" she ordered him with tears in her eyes "We have to get you to the hospital..." She didn't continue as Sasuke placed his index and middle fingers on her forehead.

"Stop crying, damn it." He responded, a smirk forming on his face "It's not nearly as bad as you think. I can walk for starters."

Sakura looked doubtful at first, but when he got to his feet and walked a few steps she seemed to trust his judgment.

"Don't ever do that again." She sobbed "I don't know what I would do if I lost you."

He went up to her and wrapped her in a warm embrace. She still shivered a bit, but soon relaxed in his arms. Sasuke loosened up the hug a bit, to plant a soft kiss on his girlfriend's lips, which she gladly accepted.

When he finally pulled away he could see her wipe away the rest of the tears from her eyes, a smile forming on her lips. That was what he had hoped to accomplish, he just couldn't stand seeing her be sad. Her smile brought out her beauty to the fullest and that was something Sasuke would consider a gift not only for him, but everyone else who could see her as well. He would never say that out loud though, as he felt it would sound too out of character for him.

"I'm sorry to have worried you." He said calmly as he started walking in the direction of the hospital "Let's go." Sakura gave an eager nod before joining her beloved Anbu captain on their way to the big grey building marked 'hospital'.

* * *

"Here we are." Naruto said to the little girl he had been carrying, as he put her down in the civilian shelter. The girl smiled at him before looking at the crowd of people that had sought shelter from the ongoing invasion. She suddenly darted off into the crowd, but before Naruto could worry too much he saw her being picked up by a couple, probably her parents he figured. She waved towards him, offering a bright grin, which he returned, before leaving the shelter to rejoin the battle.

"Naruto come in." a voice called out to him via radio. He instantly recognized the voice as that of his friend Sakura. "I've found Sasuke and am escorting him back to the hospital, but the situation doesn't look too good. We need you out here."

"I've just finished some urgent business of my own." The blond Ninja answered "Where am I needed exactly?"

"Captain Yamato requested help at the southern gate. It seems as though that's where the enemies are concentrating most of their efforts. Sensei Gai said that John and some other guy like him are on their way as well."

"Then we may have a good chance at finishing this quickly. I think I've met the person in question already." He responded.

"Really?" Sakura sounded annoyed, yet worried at the same time "Then I guess that's why Lady Tsunade is asking YOU to check them out."

"Got it!" Naruto said and with that he made for a speedy sprint towards the southern gate.

* * *

The SPARTAN III named 'Six' came to a halt in front of John and silently ordered him into a nearby empty building. The Master Chief found this strange, yet didn't say anything as he had been trained all his life to always trust authority. The lieutenant turned to face him.

"Alright Master Chief, I need to know for certain that you won't have any problems with me being in command." The SPARTAN said "I know that I outrank you according to the UNSC military ranking system, but since we are the only UNSC presence on this planet and we are currently not even in the Milky Way galaxy I would say…" He didn't get a chance to speak any further as Cortana interjected.

"So I was right! The Galaxy I saw up in the sky in the past nights actually was our Milky Way!" Six looked at John in what the Chief suspected was supposed to be a questioning look. "Oh I'm sorry, I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Cortana; I'm an A.I. of the UNSC. Glad to see you again Noble Six."

The lieutenant remained silent for a Moment before perking up in realization "The package…" He mumbled "You were the package!" he said much clearer now. "Wow would you believe the coincidences?" he chuckled.

Now it was the Master Chief's turn to give a confused look. "He's the SPARTAN that safely got me to the 'Pillar of Autumn'." Cortana clarified.

"To answer your original question lieutenant" John finally said "no I have no problems with you being in charge. UNSC regulations are independent of where the affected officers are in the known universe."

"Well that's good then. But please, call me Six. I don't like being addressed only by my rank." The blue-armored soldier said.

"Very well… Six." The Chief answered in a slightly uncomfortable tone. He wasn't used to referring to higher ranked officers without using 'Sir' or mentioning their rank. This would be difficult for him, but he was willing to try and learn, at least for Cortana's sake if not for himself. His virtual companion would approve of his choice, he was sure of that.

"Alright then, let's move it SPARTAN." Six said turning to leave the building "We've got a town to defend."

* * *

Naruto had already arrived at the southern gate and what Sakura had told him seemed to be very true. There were more enemies around than anywhere else in the village. He could see Captain Yamato and his team struggle with a group of staff-wielding robots, while also having a small team of aliens creep up behind them. Without even giving it a second thought he concentrated his chakra in his right palm and jumped down at the aliens.

The explosion his Rasengan resulted in was enough to take its targets out of commission for good. However it also had the negative effect of being a surprise to the Leaf Shinobi as well. Instantly, two of them swung their heads around to make out the source of the noise. The robots however didn't seem fazed and exploited this opportunity by slashing at their distracted targets. Neji countered the attack with little effort, his Byakugan granting him 360° vision. Choji on the other hand was less fortunate and had the bladed staff cut through his clothing and leave a deep cut in his torso.

He fell over cursing in pain, while all of the robots changed their target to Naruto, all jumping towards him at the same time, but Naruto was too startled to dodge the incoming blades.

The closest blade only stopped mere millimeters in front of his eyes. All of the attackers now seemed to be frozen in place.

"_Movement system malfunctioning. Combat mode on standby." _The robots suddenly said in unison as Naruto finally regained his senses and jumped out of what would have been harm's way.

"About time you'd show up Naruto." The ever cool and collected Shikamaru teased. "These guys have been such a drag to deal with."

Meanwhile Neji was analyzing Choji's wound. "It's pretty bad, guys." The Hyuga said "He has to get to the hospital quick."

"Ino. Get Choji to the hospital, it's heavily fortified so it's probably our safest bet for him." Captain Yamato finally interjected "Everyone else regroup, we've got another wave incoming."

The young woman did as she was told while everyone else got ready for the next group of enemies that was heading their way. Naruto got in position, when someone radioed in.

"Kakashi here, we're coming in as reinforcements." Naruto's sensei said shortly before appearing next to Yamato alongside Sai and Hinata.

Naruto was glad to see that they were okay. Kakashi seemed a bit worn out and Sai had a few bruises, but other than that they looked ready for a fight. Hinata had a determined look on her face, one that the blond Shinobi had grown fond of ever since Hinata's fight with Neji back in the Chunin-Exams.

She noticed him looking at her and came over. "Is everything alright, Naruto?" she asked wile blushing slightly. Now it was Naruto's turn to blush "No. I mean yes, everything's fine." He stuttered looking away. "Besides the attack on our village of course." He added.

While they had been talking an enormous group of robots had assembled in the streets before them. There were three different kinds of models, five of the staff-wielding ones that had almost Ninja-level speed and agility, eight of the bird-like ones that could actually fly and were equipped with razor-sharp claws and last but most certainly not least two of the gigantic titans with their tubes-for-hands and nearly impenetrable defense. From the middle of the mechanical crowd an alien strode forward, its head held high and proud.

It growled something in a foreign language before the robots stated "_Termination protocol authorized._", and charged at the defending Shinobi.

"Scatter!" Kakashi shouted and everyone in the group obliged. The defending Ninjas instinctively formed small squads of two, except for Kakashi who simply made some Shadow Clones to help him. The robots also split up in squads to take on their adversaries, two of the bird-like ones and one staff-wielder charging directly towards Naruto and… Hinata. Only now he fully realized that she was his squad mate for this upcoming fight. Only one other thought was on his mind as he initiated the counter attack: "Where is John? And where is this other person, that looks so much like him?"

He didn't have time to follow that train of thought any longer though, as the robot in front of him demanded all of his attention. It started by thrusting its bladed staff forward in an attempt to impale Naruto, which he easily sidestepped, but the robot already turned for a kick to Naruto's midsection instead. Meanwhile he could hear Hinata struggle with the bird-like robots somewhere to his right.

The blond Ninja blocked the kick with his forearms, but the impact pushed him back nonetheless. This robot was good. Like, really good at what it was doing, which apparently was Tai-Jutsu. Naruto aimed a chakra-empowered punch at the robot's torso, but was caught off guard when it simply grabbed his hand mid-air and flung him around, throwing him against a nearby wall. The impact wasn't as bad as he had feared though. It did hurt, but he didn't feel like any bones had been broken, so he stood back up and grabbed the spear that was thrusted towards him.

Naruto made sure he wouldn't let go of the staff when he pulled the robot in closer and planted a Kurama-empowered Rasengan into its torso, obliterating it in the process. He took a short breather when he sensed something approaching from behind him with incredible speed. All he could do was turn his head to see the sharp metallic claw of one of the mechanical birds being about to gauge his eyes out.

Luckily it didn't come to that as something hit the robot from the side and destroyed it. "Twin Lion Fists!" Hinata shouted as she used her technique to save Naruto from almost certain death. He thanked her with a sincere smile, resulting in a small blush from the Hyuga heiress, before throwing a Rasenshuriken after the other bird-robot that was still circling above them. The Jutsu hit its target and wiped it from existence.

When Naruto looked around he saw the others still struggling with their respective foes, while the colossal titans were slowly but steadily destroying the buildings all around them. They would have to be taken out fast, before they would destroy the entire district.

"Naruto, it's John!" Hinata tapped on his shoulder before pointing to a small alleyway that led to the street they were fighting on. And sure enough it was the green armored warrior from a different world. But he wasn't alone. Right beside him ran a similar warrior in blue and gold armor that was a tiny bit shorter than John, but still a giant compared to pretty much every other person Naruto knew.

"We'll take care of the big ones." He could hear the SPARTAN say via radio.

"Don't you dare, think you could hog all the fun to yourselves." Naruto answered with a smirk. "Hinata and I are going to handle the one that's closer to us." There was a short pause.

"Suit yourselves." The stranger interjected "Let's move." Naruto and Hinata didn't waste another second as they started throwing shuriken to gain on of the robot's attention, while the SPARTANs were firing their weapons on the other one, for the same purpose most likely.

* * *

The Titan turned towards them and didn't waste any time opening fire with its Gatling-guns. Six evaded to the left, so the Chief jumped to the right, hoping to confuse the enemy. Since their foe was a robot however it simply focused its fire on John, forcing him into cover.

"Lieutenant!" he said through his comm-link with the other soldier "There should be a glowing red light on its back. That's a structural weakness you can exploit."

"Roger that, Chief!" the answer came via comm.

The barrage of bullets stopped and the Master Chief took this opportunity to see what was happening. Naruto and Hinata had both been forced into cover, but seemed alright. The Titan had apparently let its guns overheat, which gave the Chief this short breather. Meanwhile Six ran up behind the giant robot, placed a plasma grenade on the weak-spot and got to cover. Apparently the robot hadn't noticed the other soldier so it fired a rocket from the launcher on its shoulder, forcing John into cover once again.

From his cover John could hear the extraordinarily loud bang of a UNSC Sniper-rifle, followed by a huge explosion. Upon looking out from his cover, he saw only the legs of the Titan remaining intact. Said legs started walking around aimlessly, but since they didn't pose any threat the SPARTANs didn't waste any more ammunition on them.

Curious John looked for the two Shinobi, who were facing the other Titan. Hinata was standing in the open, being fired at with the Gatling-guns of the robot, while moving her arms at superhuman speeds. Her hands seemed to emit some form of blue energy, effectively blocking every single bullet that was flying her way.

Naruto ran up behind the monstrosity and seemed clueless as to what he should do, since he didn't form hand-seals or carried any sort of weapon. John aimed his pistol on the Titan's back, but before he could shoot a gigantic clawed hand erupted from the blond Ninja, grabbing the robot and simply squishing it into oblivion.

"Okay…" Cortana said in an astounded voice "What on Earth was that?"

"That…" John answered "is why we're going to win this battle."

He looked over to the lieutenant who simply stared at the action performed by Naruto. John couldn't see the soldier's eyes, but he was sure behind the golden visor was a look of pure astonishment. And had John not been around Naruto so long, he would've had the same look on his face right now.

Finally the gigantic glowing hand retracted into Naruto's body and the blond Ninja gave a foxlike grin to the SPARTANs.

"Not to be rude or anything" Six started "but what the hell was that just now?" John couldn't help, but wonder about that as well. He had seen a lot of crazy stuff, but nobody had grown gigantic glowing limbs before.

"That was just Kurama helping me out a bit." Naruto said "He is a Biju, a powerful spirit that was sealed within me when I was born."

"I see…" The lieutenant didn't sound too convinced, but that was just as likely to be true as any other explanation that the two soldiers could've thought of.

"Area secure." Kakashi said via comm "The enemies seem to be retreating."

"About time they realized, this was a dumb idea." Naruto said. John couldn't help, but agree. The covenant had probably assumed to fight against regular humans. For those this army would've been more than enough, but on this planet some humans were absolutely not average. And quite a bunch of these were living in this village and had set their minds on protecting it.

The covenant and their robots were actually retreating... At least that would explain why the sounds of the battle had died down to nothing and no new foes were in sight at all.

"Alright I just received notice from the Hokage." Kakashi told the group a while everyone met up in the middle of the street. "The Anbu are forming a perimeter around the village and all of us are to head to the Hokage's office." Then he looked at Six: "She'll definitely want to speak to you. I'm Kakashi by the way, Kakashi Hatake. Nice to meet you." He offered a hand for a handshake.

Six took a moment before accepting the handshake and introducing himself: "You can call me Six."

* * *

**Thanks a bunch for reading this Chapter. As I stated previously, I'm going to have a lot more time to write for this story, so hopefully the next update will be soon. No promises though ^^'**

**Have a great day everyone :D**


	11. Chapter 11: The birth of a Demon

**So I've received mixed reviews about my decision to have Noble Six in my story, but I'm going to stick with it since I myself like the idea. I'm fairly sure that I probably screwed up at one point or another when writing this chaper (continuity-wise), but I hope I'm wrong ^^'. In any case please enjoy this chaper :)**

* * *

The sun had set a couple of hours ago. He was tired and hungry, but still he kept moving forward. Reach had fallen. Noble Six had known this ever since he and Jorge had taken down that Super Carrier. Even back then it had only been a matter of time. By now he had watched his entire team die. Except for Jun, but something deep within was telling him, that he'd never meet Noble Three again.

They had sacrificed everything for a planet, which then had been taken by the Covenant anyways. His last actions under UNSC orders had ensured the safe take-off of the 'Pillar of Autumn', but it would most likely cost his own life. He was ready though. Ready to take as many Covenant soldiers with him as possible.

While fending off hordes of enemies after leaving the MAC-cannon behind, ha had come up with a plan, a final plan. He was returning to the gigantic Forerunner structure, where Halsey had given him the package. According to Intel gathered throughout the battle of Reach, the Covenant had high interest in Forerunner technology. That was why Six hoped to find a lot of the Covenant there and then blow the entire thing up.

He had raided an armory, nobody else was ever going to use that again anyways, and made his way to his destination armed with several heavy weapons and powerful explosives, to destroy the Forerunner artifact and all Covenant within and around it. If he couldn't save the planet and his team, he could very well at least avenge them.

With his mind set and no other UNSC personnel left on the entire planet he entered the gigantic cavern through a crack in the mountain that was around it. The crack was small enough to not have been found by the Covenant yet, but just about large enough for Six and his equipment to fit through.

Once inside he took in the scene before him. The cavern was truly gigantic. The Forerunner structure slightly stuck out from the ice, leaving the SPARTAN wondering about its actual size, which had to be even more monstrous than the cave it was found in. In front of the artifact thousands of Covenant soldiers had built up a sort of war camp.

From their lack of guards and attention towards anything, but the huge piece of machinery in front of them, Six could easily deduce that they were sure of having wiped out all humans on Reach. And they were almost correct. Almost.

He stayed in the shadows, always cautious not to give away his presence to the enemy. Taking a large detour around the Covenant camp, he arrived at the construct about one hour later. The aliens were starting to retreat to their sleeping quarters, except for a few guards, who were patrolling in front of a small entrance into the ancient artifact.

The SPARTAN instantly knew that this was where he was headed. He carefully hid most of his gear behind some large, sharp rocks about 30 meters away from the entrance. Usually he would've kept his heavy weapons with him, but in this instance stealth and thus silence was vital. Equipped with only a silenced SMG and a combat knife he slowly approached the enemies' position.

Upon closer inspection Noble Six noticed the laughable quality of the guards. A Ranger accompanied by two Grunts and an Elite Officer were all the Covenant forces between him and his goal. The two Elites seemed to be in a conversation, not paying much heed to anything else around them, especially not the two Grunts, who were about to fall asleep next to a rock that just happened to provide perfect cover.

Six crept up to the alien soldiers and before the Grunts could even produce as much as a surprised noise, he had grabbed them and clapped their skulls together with enough force to at least knock them out cold, if not kill them on the spot.

Everything else remained quiet. The Elites were still talking to one another and hadn't noticed the two missing Grunts. Then suddenly the Ranger gave a light growl and turned around. Six had taken cover before the alien could see him though. On his motion tracker he could see a red dot slowly advancing to his position, which had to be the Elite.

He carefully climbed up the rock a few meters and held still, to not give away his position. The Ranger turned around the corner and raised its rifle upon seeing its subordinates presumably dead. Slowly the Ranger advanced, carefully eyeing its surroundings, but it didn't think of looking up.

Once it had passed the SPARTAN, he jumped down and rammed his knife into the alien's skull, instantly killing the foe. His motion tracker showed the other Elite still minding its own business, which meant he still hadn't been noticed.

Noble Six looked out from behind the rock and saw the Officer had turned its back to him. He grabbed his knife and seized the opportunity. He ran towards the alien, but when he was only six meters away it suddenly drew its energy sword.

Foreseeing the alien's next move Six dove down, successfully rolling under the sweeping blade. He stood back up behind the foe, turned around and rammed the knife into the Elite's neck with enough force to penetrate the energy shields and rip open every bit of flesh and blood vessels that were in its way.

A light growl which almost sounded like a sigh was the last sound the Elite would ever make.

Now there was nothing left to keep him from his goal, so Six entered the artifact. The interior was almost exactly like the exterior of the Forerunner construct: grey, brightly lit and shaped in the typical style of the Forerunners.

It seemed that UNSC personnel had already been here before, since some of the walls had directions written in English on them. Thanks to these directions, the SPARTAN soon found his way to what he was hoping for: structural weaknesses in the construct. In the large room he entered there were four pillars that were radiating a strange, but powerful energy. They were most likely reactors of some sort.

Noble Six planted the explosives he had and took the remote detonator with him. He had to somehow lure as many Covenant troops into the artifact and then go out of this world with a bang. A huge one at that. After looking around the structure a bit longer he found a room that was easy to defend and fortified it to the best he could.

Now the hunt was on. It was finally time to avenge this world and all the lives lost on it. A rocket launcher on his back, the pistol at his side and a DMR in his hands the super soldier made his way back to the entrance of the construct.

Once outside he pulled the pin of a grenade and threw it into the alien camp, then he took out his rocket launcher.

"This one's for Jorge!" he shouted as the grenade detonated, killing a dozen Grunts and Jackals, while waking up the entire camp. Six aimed down the sights of the launcher towards a commando tent from which an Elite General just emerged. "This one is for Kat!"

The alien didn't have any time to react before it was torn into a thousand pieces by the explosion of the rocket that had hit it straight in the face. The tent had been blown into oblivion as well.

He had been trained to suppress all emotion, to never let his feelings get the better of him or even allow them to show, but even Six couldn't stop a satisfied smile form on his lips as he rained bloody vengeance on the Covenant troopers. And he wasn't going to stop anytime soon.

Three Jackals were trying to get to cover to his right, but his Pistol made quick work of them, "This is for Commander Carter!" Each shot met its target perfectly. Never before had Six aimed so precisely on so many consecutive moving targets.

The motion tracker of his suit gave a quick warning that an enemy was running up behind him. Six ducked and turned around with a leg-sweeping kick that made the sword-wielding Elite fall on its face and before the alien could even comprehend what was happening Noble Six was on top of it and landed a punch so powerful to the back of the aliens skull that his fist easily smashed through the plasma shields and crushed the Elite's skull.

"That was for Emile!" he told his now dead foe. Slowly but steadily the Covenant troopers reorganized and opened fire from all directions on the SPARTAN, so he was forced to retreat towards the Forerunner construct.

Plasma was flying everywhere and Six' shields got lower and lower from the hits he didn't manage to dodge. Upon entering the artifact Six could see a huge wave of enemies following him, set on eliminating the last human on Reach. Everything was going according to plan.

The interior of the artifact was a maze, but Six remembered the layout perfectly, quickly making his way to the fortified room, from which he was going to blow the Covenant soldiers to hell. That thought had a special kind of ring to it… "Hell… That is what Reach has become. If that's the case, I guess that makes me… a demon." Six again couldn't help, but give a satisfied smile at this thought. He was going to die. But he was making sure to take a truly legendary number of foes with him.

Plasma fire was chasing him down and according to his HUD the enemies were gaining on him. That was when he had an idea. He turned his radio on an open comm-channel and asked into his comm: "Dot, are you there?"

There was a moment of silence, before the A.I. responded on a private channel: "Affirmative Noble Six. How may I assist you?"

"Do you have intel on the languages of the Covenant?" he asked.

"Positive." Dot answered "I have vast knowledge of the language of the Sangheili, the species commonly referred to as 'Elites', which stems from years of comm analysis…"

"Perfect!" the SPARTAN interrupted her "I need you to translate something for me."

After telling Dot the text he wanted translated into Sangheili there was a moment of silence before the text popped up on his HUD with an attached sound-file.

Just then a plasma charge flew past him while he turned around the last corner. He stormed into the room he had prepared for this moment and sealed off the doors. It was only a matter of time before the Covenant were going to break through the blast doors, but he only needed a bit of time.

He connected his armor with the comm system that the UNSC science teams had installed within the artifact and started speaking in Sangheili, knowing that every single alien soldier inside the structure would hear and understand his every word:

"This is for Reach. For all the lives you have taken. I may not live to see another day, but I'll make sure to welcome you… to hell!"

He heard a baffled Grunt outside scream something in perfect English: "A demon!"

Though that was a surprise, Six wasn't going to change his plan. He went over to a Forerunner control panel and triggered the explosives that were all over the facility. The ground shook violently and explosions drowned out the terrified cries of several hundred Grunts, Jackals and Elites.

To make sure the technology of the artifact was of no use to anyone that might find this room unharmed he aimed at the control panel and smashed right through it with his fist. The explosions continued, signaling a chain reaction that would probably destroy the construct in its entirety. All the while the room he was in started humming with energy.

Six didn't know how, but apparently his punch had activated something as the humming and the bright lights indicated. An explosion blasted the ground open, sending the SPARTAN flying towards the ceiling. When he smashed into it there was a bright flash of light and then he was falling.

But the fall was longer than should be possible. The ground of the lower level had only been about seven meters away and in his armor he was weighing almost half a ton, yet he had been falling a solid five seconds when he finally decided to open his eyes.

He blinked once. Then twice. What he saw didn't make sense at all. He was falling towards a forest, no sign of the forerunner artifact to be seen anywhere. Approaching the ground at breakneck speed he locked down his armor. He saw a small wooden hut beneath him, which he was going to crash into through the roof; that much was for certain.

Six closed his eyes and braced for the impact. With an extremely loud crashing sound he crushed through the roof and into the floor of the hut, but the crash didn't hurt nearly as badly as he had expected. His shields only went down to a quarter of their full power, but aside from that he had no trouble unlocking his armor and standing back up, instinctively reaching for his pistol. He was relieved to find it still in its place.

Just then his motion tracker flared red, signaling an unknown contact about to hit him from his right. Noble Six blocked the incoming attack with his arm and was surprised to see a masked human wielding a single-edged sword being the attacker.

"I don't know who or what you are…" the stranger snarled "But you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, we can't have any witnesses surviving!" With that he spun around and tried hitting a kick to the SPARTAN's midsection. Six was too baffled to even react, but his armor took care of the attack anyways.

The stranger then slashed down with his Katana again, which Six this time managed to catch in his hand and landed a punch on the man's chest. He could hear and feel his adversary's ribs breaking under the force of the impact, before the enemy flew backwards out of the open door, past two more masked strangers.

They appeared to be at least as dumbfounded as Six. When had he gotten this strong? He knew he was superhuman in almost any possible way, but this level of strength was new to him. The enemies quickly decided to attack him from both sides with some sorts of knives and throwing stars, which didn't even scrape the SPARTAN's shields.

"What… What the hell are you?" One of the attackers shouted in a panic.

"Me?" He replied realizing that killing these people was a justifiable act of self-defense now "I'm just a demon, stranded in a new hell." With that he aimed his pistol at the foe and killed him with a quick bullet to the head. He also made short work of the other one.

When he was done his motion tracker flared up again, so he immediately spun around aiming at the unknown contact.

"Please don't kill me!" the man cried "I'm not with them I swear!" He looked a lot different from the other men, for one he wasn't masked and he didn't seem armed either. Six put his gun down.

"It's okay. As long as you don't attack me, I won't have to hurt you." He said "You see I have no idea where I am here. Would you mind telling me about this place?"

"You're in one of the many forests of the Realm of Fire." The man said, still visibly scared. From the clothes of these people Six could deduce that he was not on any modern colony of Earth, yet these people were obviously humans. Or a different species that just happened to look exactly like humans.

Looking out of the door he tried to find the last enemy, who he had struck hard enough to send him flying, but there was no trace of said foe to be seen. Apparently the man had escaped with his serious injuries and without Six noticing. Six couldn't help, but feel impressed. He made to leave the hut into the forest, to come up with a plan on what to do next.

"Hey." The man behind him spoke up. When he turned around the man flinched back, still obviously scared. "I don't wish to sound disrespectful, but would you mind telling me who or what you are? Are you death itself?"

"Something like that…" Six said in a low voice "I'm Noble Six." And with that he left into the woods, leaving behind an astounded human or at least human-looking creature. He decided to keep his distance from all civilization until he could tell for sure, where he was and who or what these people were.

Even on the furthest away colonies of Earth and all rebelling worlds had technology that was at least far enough advanced to have simple guns. It wasn't like guns were the newest of technological breakthroughs, yet these masked men had attacked him and the other men using primitive weapons like knives and swords. All things considered Six couldn't be on a planet known to the UNSC, though the surface reminded him a lot of Reach and even Earth itself.

* * *

When Nightfall finally came Six had built himself a shelter into a small cave and had covered the entrance with branches and leafs, so that he wouldn't be found too easily. He wondered if letting that last man live had been the right choice. The man hadn't been a threat in the least, but maybe having him tell the tale could lead to a possible threat in the future.

The SPARTAN was tired from the battles on Reach and now from this day which he would mark as the weirdest day of his life. In hopes that he would be able to find a solution to his new problem the next day or week he went to sleep. He remembered what the Grunts had called him: a demon. Six couldn't help wonder about that as he drifted off to a light sleep. Was he in fact so fearsome as to be called a demon?

During the following days and nights Noble Six tried to get an idea of where in the universe he was, but it wasn't until the fourth night after his arrival on this world, that he finally found the answer. It was a beautiful night, the stars were shining brightly and most of them formed a pattern he and most other humans knew just all too well.

In the night sky he could see a bright stream of stars, which had to be a galaxy seen from the side. It was his galaxy, the Milky Way that he could see in the sky. The stream of stars was much more slim than on any other planet Six had seen the night sky from though. This meant that the planet he was on was in a solar system on the far outer reaches of the galaxy, if not actually outside of it entirely.

Somehow the forerunner artifact had transported him to this world, one that was further outside the Milky Way than the UNSC and quite obviously the Covenant had ever been. But that would have meant that the people that attacked him and the man he left alive could not have been humans. They were most likely an alien species that just happened to quite closely resemble humans. At least that was the most logical explanation the SPARTAN could come up with.

Another person might have lost their mind at the thought of being stranded on the far reaches of one's galaxy, but Noble Six stayed calm and thought logically about his situation. Reach had fallen, so the UNSC most likely assumed he was dead, so obviously they wouldn't search for him. And even if they did, the chances of him being found where he was were slim to say the least.

The forerunners were the obvious answer. The artifact had somehow brought him here, so naturally there had to be a way to get back also. That was his new plan: Find out more about the people of this world and search for anything that looked like it had to do with the forerunners, as that would probably be his ticket out of this mess. Or so he hoped at least.

* * *

He spent the next weeks traveling and exploring the area. Actually 'area' would be the wrong word, since said area was large enough to span a small country, but Six couldn't come up with a more specific word. On his travels he came across several small villages which he would go into at night always staying close to cover, so he wouldn't be spotted. On rare occasions he would grab something to eat, if he could manage to grab it without being seen. It was times like these when he really wished he had an active camouflage.

About a month went by after this when one day his armor would suddenly track a UNSC IFF-tag. It was somewhere near the place where he had crashed into the planet, so he decided it was best to head back there and see who that UNSC personnel might be. He really hoped for a scientist to show up, but the tag indicated, that it was probably a soldier. Still better than nothing.

The only problem was that he was several days away from the IFF-tag, but that wouldn't stop him. The journey was tiring and long, but he eventually reached a village where the located contact seemed to be at the moment. Six stayed outside of the village, hidden in the shadows of the trees. He had deactivated his own IFF-tag, to not be spotted. While this person was most likely an ally, it was wiser not to take any chances.

He observed the village from afar through the sights of his DMR. Then he saw him. He couldn't believe his eyes. Right there in the village was another SPARTAN, so there actually were some left. This was even a SPARTAN II. Six had heard about them and even known one personally, Jorge. Their armor was tougher and their training had been more intense than that of the IIIs. And of course the enhancement serum they had gotten was a completely different one.

The lieutenant decided not to reveal himself yet, though. The SPARTAN was walking among and working together with a group of people from this world. Six didn't believe in rogue SPARTANs, but at one point in his life he would've laughed at the idea of a planet with humans living the way they were doing here.

Nightfall came quick and the SPARTAN II and the people he was working with had set up a camp for the night. There was a campfire, several tents and lots of food. Noble Six contemplated showing himself or even just sneaking into the camp, just to get some extra nutrition. He knew he wouldn't starve right away if he didn't, but he was feeling a mighty hunger, demanding to be sated at once.

He decided to not take the risk of being spotted, which was way too high with an actual SPARTAN on the watch, so he got up and slowly made his way towards the forest to get a little bit of sleep there. He made sure to be moving slowly enough, that the SPARTAN II's motion tracker wouldn't be able to get a reading on him.

When Daybreak came Six had been awake for nearly two hours. On one hand he wanted to get up as soon as possible, to keep watch over the large group of people, on the other hand his body was aching from the lack of comfortable ground to lie on. The group was getting ready for their departure, their warriors in a trident formation at the front and sides of the rest. The SPARTAN and two more people, a young woman and a blond man were following up the trek in a UNSC Warthog. Six had seen the vehicle at the camp, but he was still wondering how it got to this planet.

He managed to quietly and stealthily follow the group, an impressive feat considering his armor's color scheme. Suddenly the Warthog stopped while the rest of the group moved forward.

"Shit!" Six thought "Have they noticed my presence?" He stayed quiet, not daring to even move an inch. The SPARTAN II was giving instructions to his two companions and then manned the Gauss-canon on the vehicle. A few seconds nothing happened.

As Six was about to relax a bit, the Gauss-canon was raised and released a round somewhere to his right. The next thing Six knew was a strangely humanoid robotic figure jumping down into the clearing. The Gauss-canon quickly fell victim to the bladed staff the robot swung around graciously. The next foe to appear was a four meter tall Titan of a robot, armed with dual machine guns and what seemed to be a rocket launcher mounted on its shoulder.

Six shifted to a new position, to get a better view on the other SPARTAN and now was fighting an internal war about whether or not to help these people. The SPARTAN II was then distracted by something glowing from behind a thick tree. Six couldn't see what it was, but a dreadful suspicion made its way into his mind. He quickly moved to a better location to see what was going on.

He didn't believe his eyes, even though he had suspected as much. Facing the other SPARTAN was an Elite wielding an activated energy sword. The alien swung its blade towards its opponent, who swiftly dodged it and pumped a load of lead into its stomach with his shotgun. The pellets tore through the alien's shields and ripped its intestines apart in a gruesome way. Then the SPARTAN turned away and focused his attention on the remaining robot.

Six was surprised to see that the other two people whom he had almost completely ignored up until now had apparently taken care of the first robot. Just then the Elite was twitching and pulled out a carbine rifle, aiming at the young woman. Before he could even think about his actions, Six had already moved forward and snapped the alien's neck. Luckily he didn't make any noise whatsoever, but still he wondered about his first impulse of helping a fellow SPARTAN being so irresistible.

The lieutenant swiftly moved back into cover and searched for a position with a better view on everything. When he found a suitable spot he saw the huge robot shooting the insides of a bubble- shield. A dumb thing to do, but this was only a machine after all. However the barrage of gunfire would be very fatal to the humans that had been fighting against it until now, once the shield would drop, which was only a matter of time. Six pulled out his DMR and aimed for the rocket launcher on the Titan's shoulder. It was probably a futile shot, but he had a strong urge to keep this other SPARTAN alive, so maybe it would at least distract the robot enough.

When the shield finally dropped and Six was about to shoot a huge red beam of energy tore right through the Titan and obliterated it. He looked back at the soldier. No wonder this robot had been dealt with so quickly. The other SPARTAN was holding an overheated SPARTAN-Laser, one of the most powerful heavy weapons to have ever been equipped to Noble Six or any other SPARTAN for that matter.

Six instantly checked his motion tracker, but no further movement could be seen, except for the people down in the clearing. Feeling relieved for not having had to reveal himself, Six finally decided that he would decide whether to reveal himself or not over a good night's sleep. He stayed in the shadows until he was sure he was alone and then finally moved in the direction that the others had left towards.

After walking and sometimes running a few kilometers Six stopped dead in his tracks. The sun was beginning to set and through the trees he could see a large open space up ahead. Not only that, but beyond that open space there was a large wall, obviously man-made. The SPARTAN deduced that this was most likely these people's base of operation. He stealthily walked along the wall a couple of hundred meters until he found a cliff in which the wall ended. To his luck he noticed a small cave within said cliff a few meters up off the ground.

Six kept a close eye on his motion tracker while moving towards the cave. He had little trouble climbing up the rough mountain side and looked into the hole, he had aimed for, pleased to find it completely empty and large enough for him to comfortably spend the night in. As always Six fell asleep rather quickly, but only had a very light sleep anyways.

In the morning he was rudely awoken, by the ground slightly trembling. He instantly got out of the cave and looked around, expecting the worst. The vibrations in the ground were an all too familiar sensation that usually only occurred due to a large army marching somewhat close by.

Surely it couldn't be the covenant, but still he realized that he had gotten into a conflict, which he would've rather stayed out of. Noble Six scanned the top of the walls, glad to see them vacated. With a few powerful jumps and thrusts from his jetpack the SPARTAN easily made his way up the wall and jumped down into the village behind it. Suddenly his motion tracker flared up with dozens of unknown contacts.

Six did the first thing that came to mind and hid inside a small shack on the back side of a building, just before any of the contacts were in eyesight. The door featured a small hole, which he used to have a look at these contacts. They all were humans (or at least looked like humans) dressed in green vests, black sandals and metal-plate forehead-protectors. All of them looked very tense, as if they were awaiting something dreadful to happen.

The vibrations in the ground grew stronger and the people up on the wall were looking in a mixture of terror and confusion at the illusive forces behind the walls.

An explosion boomed somewhere on the other side of the wall and the defenders were making quick hand signs followed by a bunch of different kinds of attacks. Most of them spat fire down at the enemy, some were summoning huge amounts of water down the walls and a few just stuck to throwing knives and other bladed weapons. Six was astounded to see people being able to control the elements with such ease, but stayed quiet as that was just all the more reason not to get caught.

Nobody was paying any heed to what was happening inside the village, so Six took this opportunity to leave his hiding spot and retreat further into the village. There were more explosions now and some of them were getting louder as Noble Six ran down several alleyways, away from the wall. He was not going to take sides in a battle that wasn't his unless he was forced to.

He changed hiding spots several times over the course of the next ten minutes until he had to turn around and take another route to prevent being seen. The SPARTAN was running down a tight alley towards a very big looking street, but stopped dead in his tracks when he saw several contacts on his motion tracker up ahead. Enemy contacts. Not unknown, but his armor recognized some of the contacts as enemies… It couldn't be… The Covenant? There was only one way to find out.

Six carefully approached the end of the alleyway and peeked out. And sure enough he saw what he had feared. Elites. The Covenant were here, wherever "here" was. But what he also saw was a yellow glowing man beating the ever-living shit out of one of them. While still in amazement he heard a cry somewhere to his left. He immediately turned his head and with horror he saw an Elite approaching a helpless little girl, who was desperately crying for help.

At that very moment Six' mind went blank. Without giving anything a second thought he dashed out on the street and ran towards the Elite as fast as he could. Before he even knew it his fist had connected with the Elite's head and sent it flying into a building. Six didn't know if it was dead, but it most certainly didn't move anymore. He was amazed at his own strength. All SPARTANs were a lot stronger that the average human, but killing an Elite with just ONE PUNCH was unheard of.

The little girl was still shivering, but apparently too shocked to move or say anything. Six picked her up and carried her over to the yellow glowing man, who as the SPARTAN just now noticed was looking at him in a look of complete and utter disbelief, jaw wide agape.

"Are you alright?" Six decided to ask the stranger.

* * *

"Well you already know the rest of the story." Noble Six concluded, looking at the blond woman, who apparently was the leader, the 'Hokage' of this village. The room went quiet after Six had finished, everyone looking at him, including the other SPARTAN to his right.

"It's hard to imagine, that you managed to escape everyone's view for so long." The woman named Tsunade finally broke the silence. "But your story complements all other reports I've gotten, as far as our world is concerned of course, so I don't see a reason not to believe you. Also you did help us out quite a bit, so have my thanks."

"However" it was the Master Chief who was interjecting "There is one problem I have with your story, Sir. You said you were transported here shortly after the fall of Reach one or two months ago. Reach fell four years ago, so what happened to these couple of years?"

Six nearly dropped to the ground in disbelief. Four years? How was that possible? The Master Chief had no reason to lie, but there was no logical reason why he would've arrived here so much later. The trip hadn't even felt like a second, he could've sworn to have been teleported here, but this new evidence suggested otherwise.

"I think I might know the answer to that!" a female voice from the Chief's head spoke. "The Chief and I were already somewhat outside the Milky Way when we were transported here. You on the other hand were on Reach, which is several light-years away from here. So we should assume that neither of you were actually teleported, but rather sent here in a stasis-like state with about light speed I would guess. Maybe in both cases some ancient forerunner slip-space technology brought you here. That would make the most sense at least."

The entire room went quiet yet again. "Okay I have NO idea what you just said, but I'll just assume it's right and that these two gentlemen can somehow work with that piece of information." The Hokage said in a slightly frustrated voice, once again breaking the awkward silence. Cortana was right, her explanation would make a lot of sense, after all Six had been inside a forerunner artifact when he was sent here and the Master Chief had been near an artificial forerunner planet. "Alright then, I'll give you the exact same offer as the Chief." Tsunade said, gaining his attention.

"What would that be?" the SPARTAN asked, resulting in an amused smile on the Hokage's face.

* * *

**And there we go, now you all know the extended backstory of Noble Six and why he is where he is. I'm sorry if this chapter wasn't what you had hoped for, but it made sense to me to have this sort of chapter just for plot-hole-filling purposes, so I hope you enjoyed reading either way ;)**

**Once again I'll start with the next chapter as soon as I get to it, but thankfully my job allows me comfortable breaks, which I can use to write ^^**


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